PORT ST. LUCIE — Mets ace Johan Santana uses “Smooth” by Santana as his warmup song. His warmup outing yesterday was far from smooth.
Santana took the Tradition Field mound for his third Grapefruit League start and was shelled for the second time in the Mets’ 7-3 loss to the Twins.
Santana served up five runs on nine hits, including two homers, in 3 1/3 innings, as his former team had few problems against him, even without Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau in the lineup. These are only spring games, but the 31-year-old is coming off elbow surgery, and his every misstep sounds an alarm for Mets fans.
Nevertheless, Santana has plenty of confidence in himself — and in his team. He said that he thinks the Mets are a playoff team.
“Definitely,” he said. “We have to be very positive about the things that we can do. They built this team to win. And we know what we can do. But we’ve got to stay on the field. Because that was the case for us last year. We weren’t able to stay on the field. And the whole thing changed.
“But right now we feel pretty good, and we’ll see once the season starts where we end up.”
Santana threw four scoreless innings against the Marlins in his last turn, after allowing four runs on six hits in 1 2/3 innings versus the Astros in his first outing.
Yesterday he allowed two solo homers within a span of three batters in the second inning, the first a leadoff blast by Twins third baseman Danny Valencia. After Santana struck out Brock Peterson with a changeup, catcher Wilson Ramos drilled another homer.
Santana put three runners on in the third but escaped with no runs. In the fourth, though, he gave up three more hits and was charged with three more runs.
The lefty was in good spirits after falling to 0-2 with a 9.00 ERA on the spring. He said he feels perfectly healthy and that he still is getting his pitches where he wants.
“I felt pretty good,” he said. “If you see at the game the way I was pitching, I was hitting the strike zone, but at the same time, I was throwing my changeup good. Even though they hit it and put it in play, I was able to throw my changeup down. A couple of them stayed up and they put good swings on it.
“But overall, I felt pretty good. I threw some sliders there that I felt they were good, that they were coming out of my hand pretty good. And I felt that I have a little bit more on my fastball. So we’re building everything up in spring training. So to me, it was good.”
It was Santana’s first start against the Twins since they dealt him to the Mets after the 2007 season. Before the game, his former manager, Ron Gardenhire, joked, “We’re going to bunt on him and make him cover first so he at least has to get off the mound.”
Gardenhire, who called Santana a favorite of his, also said, “We miss him terribly in Minnesota.”
Santana said that it was “a little bit” strange to face his former team. The reunion certainly could have gone better.