Was it the 134 pitches? Santana's final Mets scorecard

3/29/13, Mike Vaccaro: "This will be the final scorecard for Santana’s tenure with the Mets: six years, only one of which was a full season, $137.5 million, 109 starts, 46 wins, one ultra-clutch moment and one forever night. The first, in Game 161 of the 2008 season, was precisely the kind of performance for which the Mets acquired Santana, a three-hit masterpiece against the Marlins that provided a temporary stay of a second straight collapse.

The other, of course, was a Friday night last June, a no-hitter that at once closed the lone remaining hole in the Mets’ history, electrified Citi Field ... and brought with it an almost immediate sense of doom.

Did those 134 pitches doom him? Was it the impromptu I’ll-show-you bullpen session last month when he stated whipping a baseball a day after his offseason regimen was called into question? Or was it simply the inevitable result of an ordinary-sized man with an extraordinary left arm, who simply reached the quota of abuse nature — and the vocation of pitching — would afford?" "Worst fear has finally come true," NY Post, Mike Vaccaro

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