Josh Johnson was a fantasy player's dream pitcher
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In this ongoing series -- inspired by Stereogum’s “The No. 1s” -- we’ll look back on some of the more interesting, notable, and unexpected players of the week in MLB history, an award that has been given out since 1974. While many players of the week have been written about extensively and are entrenched in baseball lore, that is not always the case.
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The Week: April 12, 2009
NL: Josh Johnson, SP, FLA
AL: Evan Longoria, 3B, TB
Whenever someone asks me who the most dominant pitcher I ever saw was, I bring out all the usual suspects: Pedro Martinez. Randy Johnson. Roger Clemens. Dwight Gooden. But there’s one name I always add that surprises people. I always add Josh Johnson.
Josh Johnson was always this close to breaking out. Anyone who played fantasy baseball between 2006-13 can tell you all about Johnson. He was always about to take over this league. A big strapping Canadian who had moved to Oklahoma and dominated high school baseball, Johnson was drafted by the Florida Marlins and immediately looked like the next superstar. In 2006, he began the season in the bullpen before emerging as one of the best starters in the game, with a 3.10 ERA and an ultimate fourth-place finish in Rookie of the Year voting. But his season ended ominously: He missed the final three weeks with forearm stiffness.
That would bleed over into 2007; he missed the beginning of the season with an irritated ulnar nerve. He tried to return but got hurt again, and eventually he’d bite the bullet and get Tommy John surgery in August. That was nothing to sweat too much: Superstar pitchers get Tommy John surgery all the time, and they turn out fine. It was just his turn. He actually had a quick turnaround from Tommy John, coming back a mere 11 months later, making 14 starts and putting together a 3.61 ERA. He was back! I’m pretty sure I drafted him at least in the second round in 2009.
It paid off handsomely for me, and the next two years were the years it came together for him. Fittingly, they were the two years in his career when he threw the most innings: 209 in 2009 and 183 2/3 in 2010. (That these were the two seasons after he came back early from Tommy John is probably not a coincidence.) He made the All-Star team both seasons, but 2010 might have been his best year, when he put up a 2.30 ERA and led the Majors in both FIP (2.41) and HR/9 (0.3). For a strikeout pitcher, he was always good at keeping the ball in the park, with a career 0.7 HR/9. He finished fifth in Cy Young voting in 2010 and struck out both Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki in the All-Star Game.
From then on, though, it was all tantalizing without the results. He missed the last month of 2010 with back pain; it might have cost him the Cy Young. He started 2011 incredibly, taking no-hitters into the fifth inning in four of his first five starts, including one that made it all the way to the eighth. (The year before, he lost, 1-0, when Roy Halladay threw a perfect game; he also pitched the first game in Marlins Park. Johnson had a tendency to pop up at big moments in baseball history.)
But then the injuries came again. It was right shoulder inflammation that took him out in 2011, after just nine starts. He had a 1.64 ERA -- the best he ever was. But, as always, he couldn’t keep it together. He came back, probably too early, in 2012, and made 31 starts, but he wasn’t the same pitcher: He put up the lowest strikeout rate and the highest HR rate of his career.
After the season, the Marlins sent him to Toronto in the José Reyes/Mark Buehrle trade, and the injuries followed him up north. This time it was triceps trouble, then forearm issues, and then bone spurs. After a 6.20 ERA, the Padres signed him, hoping he could recover; he couldn’t, and had his second Tommy John surgery. He signed another contract with them before the 2015 season, but then there were neck issues, then triceps issues, and then, that September ... yet another Tommy John surgery, his third. He gave it one more go a year later with San Francisco, signing a Minor League deal, but it didn’t work out; he retired three months later, more than four years since his last start. It all fell apart in the end.
When you’re a player like Johnson, weeks where everything’s working perfectly, at last, must be remembered forever, and that’s what happened in April 2009 when he won that Player of the Week Award. He won his first two starts that season, throwing 15 2/3 innings with one earned run, 15 strikeouts, one walk and 12 hits in wins over the Nationals and the Mets. A potential warning sign: He threw 106 pitches in the first game and 113 in the second. In fact, Johnson threw more than 101 pitches in his first seven starts of that season. He’d do it 19 times throughout the year. Which is the sort of thing that will cut your career, alas, sadly short.
The other Player of the Week that week was Evan Longoria, who, the year after winning Rookie of the Year and taking his team to the World Series, got off to a torrid start, hitting five homers in six games and batting .482.
Around the world
On the day Johnson and Longoria won their Players of the Week awards, the United States Navy freed Captain Richard Phillips from pirates who had taken over the Maersk Alabama ship off of Somalia. This incident would make up plot of the film "Captain Phillips."
The No. 1 song
“Empire State of Mind,” Jay-Z and Alicia Keys
It has always been Alicia Keys who made this song. This isn’t even one of Jay-Z’s best set of verses. But Keys always makes it soar.
At The Movies
A week after "Fast & Furious" ruled the box office, a kid took over for The Family: "Hannah Montana: The Movie" was No. 1. It beat out the truly disturbing Seth Rogan movie "Observe and Report," about a deranged mall cop.