I too thought it was a puzzling signing at the time, one that came out of left field, no pun intended. I agree with you completely about the domino effect it has had on the Phillies defense. While he has not been as bad as his batting average, he is on track to have his worst season as a MLer here in 2018 at his age 32 season. Maybe he can have a last hurrah season in 2019 at age 33 but that may be a long shot. If anything, this smacks of a classic Amaro move, signing a veteran free agent to a three year contract in his thirties--see, Ibañez, Polanco, to a lesser extent Halladay who was only good for one year of the Phillies extension that came along with his trade. At least with those three guys, they were all at-least decent in their first years. Santana was not good in year one. I have a bad feeling that either he is going to be dead weight or they are going to have to eat a lot of money to either trade him or cut him He's owed $41,666,667 after this season through 2020. I wonder if at some point we'll see him involved in something of a Chris Johnson for Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn kind of deal where the money is equal but one team gets the toxic assets off the books sooner while the other simply spreads them out out over another season and ultimately cuts them (as the Braves did with both Swisher and Bourn).
You can make an argument that he's had value in being Franco's "whisperer" but, if he was also supposed to play that role for Herrera, things are not working out too well.
