Johan Santana was arguably the best pitcher of his era. But with 32 percent of Hall of Fame ballots public, the two-time Cy Young Award winner is likely to see his candidacy end this January.

Santana has appeared on just two of the 129 ballots made public so far — or 1.5 percent. He would need to appear on 19 more of the estimated 287 outstanding ballots remaining in order to receive five percent of the vote required to stay on the ballot another season.

This is looking like an uphill battle at this point. Most Hall of Fame candidates end up with a lower final percentage of the vote than they do on the public ballots, so this won’t bode well for Santana’s candidacy — which while a bit of a stretch, is one worth examining and debating for more than one year.

Santana’s five-year stretch as baseball’s best pitcher puts him right up there with many of the greats. From 2004-2008, he  led all pitchers with at least 700 innings in just about every statistical category — and some of them are not even close. His 64 ERA- is eight points higher than the second-best pitcher in that timeframe.

This makes Santana arguably the best pitcher of the 00s. Here’s how he ranks among all pitchers in the aughts, which I’ve also outlined here and here. Santana is:

– Second in ERA (3.03). Pedro Martinez was first with a 3.01 ERA.
– Second in WHIP (1.07). Again, Pedro is No. 1 by just a hair (1.04)
– Fifteenth in wins with 118, despite not becoming a full-time starter until 2003.
– Fourth in strikeouts per nine innings (9.13).
– Sixth in FIP (3.37)
– Eleventh in fWAR (37.6). Again, Santana wasn’t a full-time starter until midway through 2003.
– Third-highest strikeout rate (25.2 percent)
– Second-best batting average against (.219)
– Second-best ERA- (69). Fangraphs considers anything below 70 to be “excellent.”

The notion of putting Santana in a fraternity with someone like Sandy Koufax might seem a little ridiculous on the surface, but it’s a lot less so when actually examining the numbers. Speaking of Sandy, here’s how his 2004-08 compares to Koufax’s 1962-66 — generally considered to be the best five-year stretch by any pitcher in baseball history:

Koufax: 1,377 IP, 111-34, 1.95 ERA, 167 ERA+, 2.00 FIP, 9.4 K/9, 40.9 bWAR

Santana: 1,146.2 IP, 86-39, 2.82 ERA, 157 ERA+, 3.20 FIP, 9.3 K/9, 35.4 bWAR

Santana may not have been as dominant as Koufax, but he’s really only a step down from arguably the greatest five-year stretch in baseball history. This should be taken into consideration by Hall of Fame voters.

MMO’s Matthew Brownstein provides further context of how truly dominant Santana was at his peak:

Santana is also one of just 19 pitchers with two Cy Young awards. Of those 19, ten are in the Hall of Fame. Two others, Clayton Kershaw and Roy Halladay, are locks to be there someday. Roger Clemens would be there if not for PED suspicions. So that’s 13 of 19 two-time winners who will likely be in the Hall of Fame when it’s all said and done. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but correlation in this case should equal at least another season on the ballot.

Top 6 players on the ballot by WAR7 (sum of best 7 seasons):

Barry Bonds 72.7
Roger Clemens 66.3
Curt Schilling 49
Chipper Jones 46.6
Andruw Jones 46.4
Johan Santana 44.8

So while Santana’s Cooperstown candidacy is likely done after this offseason, he could easily go down as the best pitcher ever to be five-percented.