So the big Cole Hamels vs. Johan Santana matchup was kind of good. It wasn't one of those transcendent matchups like we always heard about when Bob Gibson took on Robin Roberts or Sandy Koufax and all of those other great pitchers from a generation or two or go, but that's not the fault of the pitchers.
There just aren't enough great pitchers to go around to have those classic matchups the way they used to.
Nevertheless, Hamels likely will square off against Santana again this season and it has already pitched in a much-hyped showdown against Roger Clemens during his first season in the big leagues. Of that outing Hamels wasn't so much geeked up about pitching against Clemens as he was about hitting against him. In fact, the single Hamels rapped out was the only one Clemens surrendered that day.
Hamels didn't get any hits against Santana last night, but for the first seven innings of the game most of his teammates didn't either. Santana was crafty and sneakily good against the Phillies. He allowed a just one hit through the first six innings before Chase Utley led off the seventh with a solo shot into the bullpen in deep right-center. More impressively, Santana got 10 strikeouts against the first 23 hitters he faced.
The impressive part about that was Santana threw just 14 first-pitch strikes to the 26 hitters he faced. That's just OK... if that. It certainly wasn't as good as the first-strike ratio Hamels posted (22 for 28), which means a couple of things. One is Santana was sharp until he reached the 100-pitch plateau and a second is that the Mets were up there hacking early at Hamels.
Hamels noticed that. After the game he said it seemed as if the Mets' book on him was to get after him early in the count to avoid falling into a hole and putting the young lefty in position to use his batting-average destroying changeup.
"Because I've been around for two years there's plenty of video on me," Hamel said. "Hitters are swinging early in the count and not waiting for my ‘out' pitch."
As a result, the Mets forced the Phillies error-prone defense to make plays. When they didn't (misplays by Jayson Werth and Ryan Howard proved costly), Hamels' frustration showed.
"Some things caught up with me tonight," Hamels said. "I definitely showed my emotions on the field, dropping my head a few times going, ‘How did that happen?' But I'll see these guys again, and I'll make the adjustments."
Perhaps he'll even see Santana, though Hamels claimed he would be more prone to get caught up in the hype of the rivalry if he weren't pitching. When he's on the mound, Hamels says, the focus is on the Mets' hitters and not the opposing pitcher. The new-age Carlton-Seaver/Phillies-Mets matchup was almost lost on Hamels, who was more concerned with the four hits David Wright got than anything else.
Still, Hamels tipped his hand that he had some idea that Santana was stringing up the goose eggs on the scoreboard. For as much as he downplayed the big-time matchup, deep down Hamels knew Friday night's game was different.
That can explain the uncharacteristic displays of frustration on the field after a few plays.
"There definitely isn't much margin for error," Hamels said. "He's always going to be able to have success. When you go into a game, you know it's going to be low-scoring and you hope you're on the right side of it. He has phenomenal stuff that he can get away with mistakes."
Any way you slice it following the first installment, Hamels v. Santana could turn out to be baseball's best pitching duel in one of its better rivalries.