Santana throws zeros, Bay hits 1st HR as Mets win 5th in row

Johan Santana didn't have his best stuff, but he gutted out six innings while throwing a few too many pitches.

Sound familiar? It was the third straight game that a Mets starter got a little wild early and skirted trouble. But the Mets have figured out how to survive such starts, and Santana, like Mike Pelfrey on Sunday and Jon Niese on Saturday, didn't let wildness turn into runs despite throwing 115 pitches.

So the Mets took a 4-0 victory over the hot-hitting Dodgers in the first game of a doubleheader at windy, cold Citi Field, the Mets' fifth straight win and seventh in eight games heading into last night's second game.

Jason Bay hit his first home run in his 69th Mets at-bat, Luis Castillo drove in two insurance runs and the Mets' pitching staff extended its scoreless streak to 181/3 innings despite Santana (3-1, 2.08 ERA) decidedly not looking comfortable in the afternoon start, with just a few hundred fans dotting the Citi Field seats due to the added game necessitated by Monday's rainout.

"That wasn't fun at all. It was a weird day," said Santana, who walked three - all in the second inning - and allowed four hits while striking out six. "It was too cold, too windy to get anything going. I battled through it."

Santana walked the bases full in the second and got Dodgers starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda (2-1) swinging after an eight-pitch at-bat to escape that jam. He scattered four more hits over his last four innings and, with his fastball topping out at just 89 mph, he relied more on sliders and changeups to stay ahead of a Dodgers team that came into Citi Field hitting a National League-best .293.

"He's been very effective," Jerry Manuel said of Santana. "When you can shut out the Cardinals [for seven innings on April 17], when you shut out the Dodgers, I don't know how much better he can be."

The Mets got Santana a lead when David Wright scurried home on a wild pitch in the second - replays showed Wright's left hand may not have touched home plate, but Kuroda, covering home, may not have actually tagged Wright either - and extended it when Bay finally broke his homerless start in the fourth.

He hit Kuroda's second pitch of the inning over the high wall in left-centerfield; he hadn't homered since Sept. 21 of last season with the Red Sox, a span of 108 at-bats, so he wasn't even sure about this one.

"He mentioned he was running hard for a triple when he hit it," Manuel said.

The Mets loaded the bases in the seventh and Castillo drove in two with a single past a drawn-in Dodgers infield. Fernando Nieve pitched scoreless seventh and eighth innings and, with the nightcap looming, Manuel went with Pedro Feliciano to close it out and keep the incredible run of Mets pitching going.

"It's good to see everything clicking in and everybody's feeling motivated and responsible for what they need to do," Santana said.

"Everybody's motivated, everybody's having fun. It's good to see."