At Least This Lefty Wasn’t Traded

On a day where the free world was preoccupied with the travails of a certain left hander, another lefty who once commanded a similar size spotlight pitched a very strong six innings on Wednesday (no walks and six strikeouts) against the Cardinals. Unfortunately, you could hardly following with the exploits of Johan Santana past the homeristic banter of the Cardinals announcers on KMOX (which included Camptown Races jokes at Lucas Duda’s expense … you know guys, Lucas can kill you with his bare hands if he wanted). Ironic that while Santana was giving me a reason to embrace life, Mike Shannon was giving me a reason to blow my brains out.

So I’m just going to have to take the boxscore’s word for it, Santana was good. He’s been good all spring. You want to talk about parting the clouds? Sure, the lack of a court case can provide some good feelings. But if you really want to part clouds, this is how you do it. You get performances like this from your ace, the guy who gave everything he had physically until he couldn’t anymore. And now it seems like he has a little magic back. If he can somehow keep this up all season then maybe the sun will appear at Citi Field once in a while. Maybe the celebration of 50 seasons in this league might not look more like 1962 than 1962 did.

And if he can put one foot in front of the other without hurting himself, then he’ll already be ahead of top prospect Zack Wheeler, who sprained his ankle walking up stairs. This is what I get for proclaiming that the Mets no longer had the monopoly on these stupid injuries. You’d think I’d know better by now. And yeah, I know the injury isn’t serious but this isn’t funny anymore. Havens, Wright, Valley Fever Davis, Hairston, and Wheeler?

And Mike Pelfrey too? A high ankle sprain for him might partly explain his horrid spring, though apparently his outing against Houston is the best he’s felt. You know, the eight runs in under three innings? Yup, that’s the best his ankle has felt. Please, please, please … stay healthy Johan. Or else I might be driven to take some doggie downers while listening to KMOX.