If it’s been a career of what you see is what you get from Johan Santana, then it has sure been an upper-echelon run. But lately what you see is what you get from Santana has become a negative, as in No. 57 tipping his pitches.
And there is this, too: If what you saw yesterday from Santana is what you’re going to get — and it was pretty good — the question is whether that is going to be good enough from the ace of this intriguing and entertaining Mets team.
Perhaps it will be, and perhaps Santana, who did undergo elbow surgery last September, will become dominating once again, the way he last was over the second half of the doomed 2008 season, when he went 9-0 with a 2.09 ERA from July 4 to the bitter end.
Santana went into the eighth inning yesterday against the Giants and in fact got two more outs before he was pulled for somewhat sketchy reasons by Jerry Manuel following his 101st pitch of the afternoon with two outs and the tying run on first in a game the Mets led 4-3.
But two batters later, the lead was gone, and that meant the line in the box score was a pretty ordinary four runs, all earned, on eight hits with six strikeouts and no walks in 7 2⁄3. Those numbers may not quite befit an ace, but they were so much better than the ones a week ago in Philadelphia, where he was torched for an career-high 10 runs in an astonishing 3 2⁄3 innings, that Santana and Manuel both professed to be pleased.
Of course, the Mets’ second consecutive victory on a game-ending home run by the catcher, this one by Henry Blanco in the 11th, a day after Rod Barajas went deep in the ninth, and each time after blowing a three-run lead, left everyone with a good taste in his mouth.
“After last week I was definitely looking forward to getting this chance to help my team win,” Santana said after the 5-4 victory. “I’m very happy with the result getting the ‘W’ because it’s a team effort.”
His velocity, though consistent from his first pitch to his last offering, never topped 91 mph on the radar gun. He is 3-2 with a 4.54 ERA, but believes he’d been tipping his pitches. So yesterday he altered his delivery, dropping his glove on the windup instead of starting it with the glove held high in front of him.
“Sometimes I was tipping my pitches; I know that,” Santana said. “Sometimes you’re going to have teams pick up things. Dropping my glove also relaxes my shoulder and helps me with my grip.”
Santana, who was hitting 89-90-91 on his fastball all afternoon, got to 91 on his final pitch, which was lofted to left for a sacrifice fly by Pablo Sandoval. Still, without explaining why, Manuel said he had made the decision that Sandoval would be Santana’s last batter.
For his part and after his longest outing of the season, Santana said he sure would have liked to finish the inning that he had started.
“Of course,” he said. “I felt good, I felt as if I had everything, but [Manuel] felt different and he is the boss here.”
The boss has his team off to a 17-13 start, which, sorry to remind everyone, is exactly where the team stood after 30 games last season. But this is a new season, with a new breath of fresh air and with a new Santana, who has not quite yet been a showstopper, but has been pretty good.
Yesterday, when the Giants couldn’t see what they were going to get, that was good enough.