7-6-10 Z-CAP Santana Does It All, Beats Reds 3-0

Johan Santana turned in his second straight quality start of July, but this time, he came away with a win.  The numbers coming into tonight’s game were somewhat staggering:

The Mets were 1-6 in Johan’s last 7 starts
Through 7 no-decisions this season Johan has sported a 1.24 ERA
The offense has scored a grand total of 12 runs in those efforts

Ouch!  On Tuesday night, however, there was no room for the negatives as Santana was just too good.  On the heels of last night’s controversial loss, the Mets ace shutout the NL’s best offense and New York beat the Cincinnati Reds 3-0.

Having found runs difficult to come by in his recent starts (the Mets have scored a total of 1 in Johan’s last 3 outings) Mr. Santana decided to see what Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were talking about when they said “ chicks dig the long ball.”  In the 3rd inning, on the 12^th pitch of his 182^nd career at-bat, Johan hit his first major league home run.  Gary Cohen may have the winning lottery #’s for Wednesday as he called the shot before it happened, saying ‘one of these days he’s going to come up with that 1^st career home run, maybe finding that right field corner.’  The 2-2 fastball from Matt Maloney found that exact location and gave the Mets a 1-0 lead.  Interestingly, Santana was only swinging away because Ruben Tejada, who ended an 0-16 slump with a  1-out single earlier in the inning, was caught stealing during the at-bat.  With a 1-0 count Johan had squared to bunt but when he failed to  make contact Tejada was left for dead in  Willie Mays Hayes fashion.  In the end, the base running error is sure to be forgiven, especially by the Mets pitcher who said this about his first career home run:

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