trust me on this

PORT ST. LUCIE – Johan Santana felt so good during a 35-pitch bullpen session Sunday, he canceled a visit to New York to have an MRI and visit with team doctors. Either that’s why, or a snowstorm targeting the city and an already scheduled trip by the Mets’ medical staff to spring training later in the week made aborting Santana’s travel plans sensible.

The Mets had announced early Sunday that Santana would proceed with his planned throwing session off a mound, then fly to New York for a hastily scheduled checkup today.

“He feels he’s fine,” GM Omar Minaya said. “He feels he doesn’t need to go to New York.”

Santana beamed with excitement about Sunday’s session off a mound, which had been his first since Wednesday, when elbow tightness related to his triceps tendon surfaced.

“It’s the first time in the last four days that I threw, but I feel good,” Santana said. “I felt fine. I don’t think it will be any problem. I was just trying to throw my fastball and some changeups to see how my arm feels, but everything was fine. As you go, you feel better. As you throw more pitches, you feel better. That’s what you want to see. That’s telling me that we’re making progress and getting loose.”

Santana had expressed curiosity Saturday about whether his elbow would retighten after completing the bullpen session. Sunday he expressed no concern it would stiffen as the day went along.

Pitching coach Dan Warthen expressed similar approval of Santana’s showing. Santana plans to get on a mound in a couple of days for another bullpen session. Warthen hoped Santana would require only one or two subsequent batting practice sessions, one perhaps a simulated game, before getting into a Grapefruit League game. Warthen mentioned Santana’s 30th birthday, March 13, as a possible target date to pitch in a game. “No guarantees about that,” added Warthen, who estimated Santana threw at 80% to 85%.

Santana, listening in the clubhouse to an SNY report Sunday morning about Opening Day being in jeopardy, became animated when he heard the topic since he doesn’t think his availability is remotely in question.

Santana and Warthen both suggested the ace’s desire to represent Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic may have contributed to the elbow stiffening. Santana worked off a mound every other day upon arriving in camp, which is more frequently than he’s accustomed. Warthen said it was the intensity of those workouts, not the volume, which may have knocked Santana off track.

“That’s my speculation. I’m guessing that he had his own quiet agenda – not sharing it with anybody else,” Warthen said. “I think Johan had an inner feeling that he’d like to go represent Venezuela. I can understand that, and everybody appreciates it because he is the big man down there.”

Said Santana: “Coming into spring training, my mind-set was to participate in the WBC. Somehow you have to find a way to get ready. … I think that’s what it was – too much throwing too soon. That’s all it was. Once they said I’m not participating in the WBC, then we backed off a little bit.”

Jerry Manuel said there was a “very good” chance Santana would make the Opening Day start April 6 in Cincinnati. Warthen allowed for the possibility that the ace would wait until later in the first turn through the rotation before making his 2009 regular-season debut.

“I know that he would like to pitch Opening Day. We’d like him to pitch Opening Day,” Warthen said. “But we will go ahead and not push that envelope whatsoever.”

The pitching coach complimented Santana’s control. Warthen described the positive session as a weight off of everybody’s shoulders.

As Minaya watched in a golf cart and Santana threw, Warthen entered a batter’s box and Santana told his pitching coach: “I’m not going to tell you what’s coming.”

With precision, the next pitch was thrown low and inside, though not nearly close enough to upend Warthen.

“One-and-two,” Warthen later called out, assigning counts to simulate a game setting.

The next pitch hit catcher Omir Santos’ glove.

“Beautiful,” Warthen said.

Thanks for posting this story, Mister Malcolm. Yes, I think its funny that Santana will undergo elbow tests. Not funny like the last game at Shea Stadium since that was just funny/sad.

Be patient, Phils fans, Omar Minaya’s foolishness will show on its own. Give it time. Overspending for players in the prime/tail-end of their careers rarely translates into sustained success. The Mets’ roster is full of such free-agent signings/trades (i.e., Delgado, Beltran, Krod, Putz, Castillo, Schneider, etc.). Not to say that these acquisitions havent helped in the past, but I am saying they will not sustain a good ball club. Harnessing and keeping a core of home-grown players will sustain success (even the Yankees had their most success with this kind of formula in the 90s…less success when they just started buying the entire market over like the past 5 years). The Phillies are running on such a formula.

Trash-talking aside, though, I am getting kind of bored with this whole media-manipulated rivalry.

Mets-Phillies animosity was a beautiful thing that was growing on its own. why do so many people in the media blow it out of proportion to the point where it approaches laughability rather than a guilty pleasure?

I want Jose Reyes’s celebrations and Jimmy Rollins’ bravado to dictate this delicious distaste between the pair of division foes. I do not want heavily baited questions, out-of-context sound bytes, and irrelevant news clippings snowballing into confused and stilted feelings. That just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like a Michael Bay film (forced and tired melodrama).

Thought this blog was above all the Mets / Phillies shite.

Why not go the whole hog and start giving us daily updates from the Mets spring training camp??

Haha I bet there looking at K-Rod and saying, “Hey can you pitch the 1st 8 instead of just the 9th?”

that team has the knack for picking expensive injury prone players dating back to the craig swan, john stearns days

at least when they suck this year it will be in a new stadium