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It'll take more than Santana to save Mets' season

Wallace Matthews

September 14, 2008

As good as he is, Johan Santana cannot save the Mets.

Only the Mets can save the Mets.

That much was clear yesterday when, handed a golden opportunity to put a little more precious ground between themselves and the Phillies in the NL East race, the Mets wound up giving up a vital half-game to cut their lead to 2 1/2 games.

This despite a gutsy if ultimately futile performance by Santana, who battled into the eighth inning of the first game of yesterday's doubleheader at Shea and left nursing a two-run lead over the playing-out-the-string Braves.

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Inevitably, Santana had to give way to the Mets' bullpen, and, almost as inevitably, the bullpen gave up the game. With the Phillies beating the Brewers, 7-3, that left it to Jonathon Niese, a 21-year-old lefty with one major-league start on his resume, to save the Mets from what could have been a disastrous doubleheader sweep.

In the nightcap, Jerry Manuel got the kind of game out of Niese he and the Mets have come to expect, and more often than not gotten, out of Santana.

But after eight innings of six-hit shutout ball and an offense that staked him to a five-run lead, Niese, too, had to turn it over to the bullpen.

Luis Ayala nailed down the final three outs despite allowing two ninth-inning hits, salvaging a split. But for a team to get two starts as good as Santana and Niese gave them and come away with only one win seems like not only an awful waste but a disturbing omen.

In fairness, no starting pitcher can save any team, because the nature of their job necessitates that they work only once every five days. With a pitcher as talented as Santana and a bullpen as unreliable as the Mets', it is vital that the ballclub win whenever he takes the baseball.

The Mets couldn't win that first game yesterday, in part because Santana left the tying runs on base before exiting with none out in the eighth, in part because the almost-nightly parade of middling middle relievers - particularly Scott Schoeneweis and Brian Stokes - couldn't keep those runners from scoring, and in part because the Mets' bats, so hot in sweeping the Nationals earlier in the week, had gone cold over a two-day period of inactivity.

But then, Santana can't invigorate the bats, he can't stabilize the bullpen and he can't control minds. He can't even flash a World Series ring the way Pedro Martinez can because like the Mets, the Minnesota Twins teams he pitched for never made it out of the League Championship Series.

All he can do is pitch his game, as he did yesterday, and hope his teammates can do the rest. "It's just another game that ends up not the way you wanted it to," said Santana, whose 11th no-decision of the season left his record at 13-7 after the Mets went down, 3-2. "There's not much you can do or say about it."

It only goes to remind you that unless a starting pitcher can pitch shutdown ball for nine innings every time out, there are just too many variables in a baseball game, and a baseball season, to be able to depend on the performance of any one player for success.

Especially one who works basically once a week.

"He did his job," Manuel said of Santana. "He did what he was supposed to do. He gave us a chance. We didn't take advantage of it."

Now the Mets are down to just three chances to take advantage of the edge Santana usually provides them, and even if he pitches as effectively as he did yesterday - despite having little command of his fastball and getting hit hard in nearly every inning, he stifled every Braves threat through the first seven - there is no guarantee that will translate into three victories. Or two. Or even one.

The Mets know about this time of year better than most. Last year, of course, came the great Flushing earthquake of 2007, 12 losses in the final 17 games that frittered away their seven-game lead and left them with their noses pressed against the glass peering in at October. But even in 2006, when the Mets came within one win of the World Series, they faltered in late September, losing 10 of their final 17 games. But because they were 16 games up when the slide began, nobody noticed.

This year, everyone notices every misstep. Five-and-12 won't get it done this September, either, and probably neither will 7-and-10. That means a lot of Mets will have to step up if this season is to be saved.

As brilliant a solo performer as he is, Johan Santana can't do it alone.