SANTANA READY TO SHINE

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- The entire equation changed for the New York Mets with the arrival of Johan Santana. That means more than just the pitching equation.
Without Santana, what is going on now at Tradition Field could have been as much group therapy as Spring Training. There was emotional baggage remaining from the Mets' epic fade last September, and there were going to be questions asked, probably unpleasant questions, certainly in endless amounts.

But now, with the arrival of Santana, the best left-handed starting pitcher in the game, instead of looking back in real discomfort, the Mets can look forward with genuine optimism. They still have a remarkably talented lineup on the field, and now they have added an ace of aces.

You wondered how this might be taken by the Mets' previous king of the hill, Pedro Martinez. No problem.

Martinez held court on the topic of Santana on Tuesday, graciously, intelligently, expansively.

"Santana's the best, to my understanding, the best pitcher in baseball," Martinez said.

Now, it must be added that Martinez, even if he has ceded the top spot to Santana, does not exactly see himself as the mound version of chopped liver. To the question of whether he could still be an ace, he responded:

"If I take the ball against anybody, I'll take my chances."

Good enough. But there was plenty of surplus admiration for Santana. As Martinez pointed out, here is a left-hander throwing a mid-90s fastball and then coming back with the changeup, throwing it "over and over and over again, anywhere he wants, for strikes."

It is a combination that is at once dazzling for the game's observers and baffling for the game's hitters. And it is solidly in the possession of the New York Mets, transforming them from a team with something serious to forget into a team with something really good to anticipate.

There are still regrets, obviously, about what occurred last season. Martinez, who did not return to the active roster until September last year, following rehabilitation from right shoulder surgery, said that placed him in a difficult situation in which he did not feel comfortable exerting his usual influence.

"I had only been with the club a month," he said. "It wasn't right for me to call a meeting and say, 'We have to do something.'

"All I could do was sit and watch."

What happened last September isn't erased by the arrival of Santana. But it could be argued that in the Mets' current mindset, it has been replaced by the arrival of Santana, or at least moved to a back burner.

Santana eventually will impress the Mets with his pitching. For the moment, he has impressed them with his professionalism. He asks for no special treatment. He requires no special dispensations.

"He fits right in," manager Willie Randolph said. "He has his own thing getting ready, but we've talked a little bit about that and he told me from Day 1, that whatever we'd like to do, our program, he's going to try to adjust to that any way he can. So far, there haven't been any problems. Most of his stuff is conditioning. But as far as pitching, you don't change a thing. You leave him alone, man. Don't change a thing.

"With the type of work of ethic that he has, he's knows exactly what he's doing, he knows what he wants to do, he's in great shape," Randolph said. "Those are the guys that are easy to manage, because you know they're going to be ready. They understand how to prepare for the game. Those are the easy guys. He's a pro."

So the Santana era begins, with the Mets looking for something much more like the first place and 97 victories of 2006, rather than the second place and 88 victories of 2007. This seems to be a completely reasonable expectation.

If you get beyond last September, what you're looking at here is a team of exceptional talent. In the rest of the rotation, John Maine won 15 games last year and so did Oliver Perez. Even if there is some debate about the fifth spot, take a healthy Pedro Martinez and a fully functional Johan Santana, and the sky appears to be the limit.

The bullpen was also an issue in the September skid, but if Duaner Sanchez comes back healthy -- and the initial signs have been very good -- that development in itself would provide a major injection of stability.

It is also not difficult to project the position players as a first-place group, even in the difficult neighborhood of the National League East. Certainly, it would be helpful if Carlos Delgado had the kind of season that characterized the rest of his career, rather than the season he had last year. It would also be helpful if Jose Reyes played the way he did from April through August instead of the way he did in September.

Reyes is a singular talent, perhaps the single most exciting player in baseball. With David Wright coming off another truly impressive campaign, the Mets have a left side of the infield that offers the promise of success, in 2008 and well beyond.

Elsewhere, the Mets will have second baseman Luis Castillo for an entire season, as opposed to 50 games, and that should be a plus. The Mets have also improved defensively at catcher, which should be a defense-first position, with the addition of Brian Schneider.

All things taken together, regardless of what happened last September, this does not look like a club that has to settle for second place. You might have been able to make this argument, even without the addition of Johan Santana. But the addition of Santana lends not only credibility, but maybe even a certain kind of joy to the Mets' side of the debate. The recent past is not pleasant to contemplate, but with Santana, a better future beckons.