ONE FOR JOHAN
Mets finally score some runs for Santana, who earns first win since 2010 Andy Martino & Anthony Mccarron,
THROUGHOUT last winter and spring, nearly every Mets player, coach and executive held the same dream. Some voiced it in a whisper, and Terry Collins declared it publicly: If they could only get Johan Santana back, they might be OK.
Well, the unlikely dream actually became manifest, and Santana recovered from September 2010 shoulder surgery that threatened his career to once again lead the Mets’ rotation. It would have been a story of significant April uplift, if not for one surprising complication: The offense hardly scored for Santana last month.
That trend reversed on Saturday, as Santana (1-2) left with his first victory of the season, and the Mets defeated Arizona, 4-3. After allowing three runs in seven innings, while countering an occasionally high changeup and errant fastball with a sharp slider, Santana turned the question of individual wins back on himself.
“To know if you’re going to win,” he said after posting his first win i n 20 months, “you’ve got to pitch all the way to the end of the game.”
Fair enough, and accountability is difficult to dispute. Still, the Mets spent April squandering Santana’s remarkable return, as they failed to score even one run during the first 18 innings that he was pitching. This had not happened to a Mets pitcher since 2005, when Kaz Ishii also waited 18 frames for any help at all.
For tunately for Santana’s emotional state, the modern pitcher does not often define his performance in terms of his win-loss record. Like analysts and Cy Young voters, today’s ace knows to utilize other metrics for self-evaluation. “From a personal standpoint, it’s much more about ERA, quality starts and how many innings you put up,” said Santana’s friend R.A. Dickey. “Wins, you have minimal control over that in a lot of cases.”
Santana dragged his 0-2 record into Saturday’s game knowing that wins could not define him — but still wanting to end his team’s four-game stumble.
“I’m not trying to do anything or stop anything,” Santana said. “You’ve got to wait nine innings to see if you get the win.”
What he did want was to overcome the command issues that confronted him beginning in the first inning.
“His velocity was . . . probably not as high consistently as it has been,” said Collins. “His changeup was maybe up in the zone a little bit more than normally. It usually has that sink to it. But he made pitches.”
He did indeed, especially as the game progressed. Beginning around the fifth inning Santana’s fastball became more powerful, and he was able to elevate it for strikeouts. The results were hardly flawless: After two-run singles by Mike Nickeas and Andres Torres in the fourth created a lead — finally — Santana regifted two runs in the fifth.
He was good enough, though, and he finished by striking out Paul Goldschmidt to end the seventh. That was Santana’s 108th pitch, his high for the season.
From there, he was forced to hope that Bobby Parnell and Frank Francisco, members of a shaky of late Mets bullpen, could make possible Santana’s first win since Sept. 2, 2010, against the Braves.
Santana allowed nine hits, three runs, striking out five and walking one. “I wouldn’t say he had his most outstanding stuff, but he battles as good as anybody,” said Nickeas, the catcher. “Later in the game he actually got better.”
Someday, perhaps, Santana will recover enough to own the entire game, to decide for himself if he will leave with a win or loss. Right now he has his health, and that is significant — but he still does not have total control.
“In order for you to control something,” he said, “You have to stay there for the whole game, and that’s something that I’m not doing right now.”