It's easy to see why the New York Mets were impressed enough with Johan Santana to sign the twenty-eight year old left-hander to a record 6-year, $137.5 million dollar contract extension which completed Santana's trade from Minnesota to the Big Apple after eight seasons with the Twins, after all, in 3 career Interleague starts against the Mets, Santana is (3-0) with 1 complete game shutout and a 0.82 ERA with 18 K's and only 1 walk over 22 innings pitched against his new team.

     The complete game against New York came on June 19, 2007 at Shea Stadium, where Santana allowed just four hits over the nine innings pitched with just one strikeout in a game which, as described by mlb.com's Marty Noble in an article entitled, "Mets draw blank vs Santana", sounds like bad news for teams visiting New York this season:

          "...He (Santana) dealt from the top of the deck, challenging
          them with fastballs and using the dimensions of Shea
          Stadium to his advantage. The Mets feared his slider and
          devastating changeup late in the count, so they took their
          chances with early-in-the-count fastballs designed to
          avoid the sweet spots on their bats."

     Against the other NL East teams Johan Santana faced during the Interleague play of the 2007 season...

Atlanta - (0-0) in 1 start with 7.0 IP, 5 hits and 2 ER against, 3 walks, 9 K's, 1 HR allowed in a pitcher's duel against Tim Hudson that Minnesota eventually wins.

Florida - (1-0) in 1 start with 6.0 IP, 5 hits and 1 ER against, 1 walk, 8 K's, 1 HR allowed in a 7-4 win over the Marlins.

Washington (0-1) in 1 start with 7.0 IP, 7 hits and 2 ER against, 0 walks, 5 K's, and 1 HR allowed in a game the Nationals win 3-1 on Ryan Zimmerman's 3-run HR off J. Santana in the 3rd inning.

     Johan Santana's totals against the NL East in '07-

          (2-1) on the season against the NL East, 29 IP, 21 hits
          allowed, 6 runs against, 5 of them earned, 3 HR's hit, 4
          walks given, 23 K's, and a 1.55 ERA with a 1.16 WHIP.

     Johan Santana's career totals against the National League, according to baseball-reference.com and yahoosports.com writer Andy Behrens in his article entitled, "Roto Arcade: Santana to play Shea", in which he writes:

          "These are Santana's career inter-league stats: 182.2 IP, 16-4, 191 K, 2.27 ERA, 0.91 WHIP."

*The BravesBooster got his totals from yahoosports.com, which I've double-checked and which appear correct, so we thought we'd call upon the readers out there to solve this statistical anomaly...

From Yahoosports.com BravesBooster had Johan Santana's #'s against the National League as...

(13-3) with a 1.96 ERA in 142 IP, with 93 hits 31 ER's allowed, 37 walks given and 133 K's overall.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/6441/splits;_ylt=ArrE5ITvZ2ghJSPea1dNCiuFCLcF?year=career&ty pe=Pitching

AND NOW...

Johan Santana's career splits at baseball-reference.com

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/psplit.cgi?n1=santajo02

First one to solve the mystery gets to have his/her name mentioned as the one who solved the mystery.

**Johan Santana vs the NL East Links*

mlb.com's Marty Noble's article, "Mets draw a blank vs. Santana", at washington.nationals.mlb.com:

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/gameday_recap.jsp?ymd=20070619&content_id=2036179&vkey=reca p&fext=.jsp&c_id=nym

yahoosports.com's Andy Behrens' article, "Roto Arcade: Santana to play Shea":

http://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/mlb/news?slug=ab-rotoarcade_012908

(ed. note- "I emailed Mr. Behrens to see what he thought of the stat question, i'll let you know if I get a response...)