No Sour Grapes For Johan Santana

When the Mets went after Johan Santana last off season, some Mets fans were stoked, while others thought we either gave up too much to get him, or that we paid him too much to keep him.

Fast forward 12 months later…

I think it’s safe to say that there’s not one Mets fan who has not grown to love Johan Santana after delivering a season full of non-stop pitching excellence that had most of the stadium on their feet as he left the mound after each home start.

Surely, we can make the case for Santana who was the hands down winner of the Cy Young Award if you asked any Mets fan, but alas it doesn’t work that way.

Thanks to the bullpen that keeps on giving, heartache that is… once again they screwed Mets fans and Johan Santana of what was rightfully ours.

Santana could have easily had more wins then either Lincecum or Webb while winning the ERA crown.

And while many of us have quite a few choice words for Aaron Heilman and company, Johan Santana instead rose above all that and took it all in stride.

“No one likes the way last season finished,” Santana said in a statement the Mets released. “But we can’t look backwards. We have to look ahead and make it better this season. I loved my first year in New York. The fans were great, and I can’t wait for Spring Training. Right now, I’m rehabilitating my knee and everything is fine. I’ll be ready to go in February.”

The best way for the Mets to reward Johan Santana is by pledging to blowup the bullpen and rebuild it with a top of the line closer and two setup men who could actually bridge the gap from Santana to the closer.

Guilty parties like Heilman, Schoeneweis, and Sanchez should be banished and should not be allowed to step foot in CitiField unless it is in another teams uniform. You want to keep Smith, Feliciano and Stokes, fine, but the “masters of disasters” have to go.

Anything less is a slap in the face to Santana and to us.