Will Santana transfer his dominance from AL to NL?

Johan Santana has not been kept off-balance by the National League, going 1-1 with a 1.93 ERA in two starts. Heinz Kluetmeier/SI

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When the word came down last offseason that Johan Santana was making his escape from the American League -- technically speaking it was a trade, not a jailbreak -- the reaction from those in and around baseball was nearly unanimous. This guy, said the experts and other observers, is going to absolutely dominate in the National League. It's not even going to be fair.

Taking a young, two-time AL Cy Young winner, not-too-arguably the best pitcher in the game, and dropping him into a so-so division in a league where they actually let lame-swinging pitchers try to hit, lends itself to that kind of hyperbole. The next coming, supposedly, of Sandy Koufax. Or Steve Carlton.

Yeah, it's easy to see Santana with 20-plus wins and an ERA so small we'll have to send out a search party of sabermetricians to find it.

But here are a couple of questions worth pondering before the Mets' lefty makes his first home start of the season, scheduled for Saturday afternoon against the Brewers: Is it really going to be that easy for Santana? Can the poor NL put up any kind of a fight at all?

"He was so dominating in a hitter's league. So you would hypothesize that he would probably be better here," says Chipper Jones, the Braves' third baseman. "But so much of this is about run support and defense. He could pitch like he did over there and go 15-13.

"Or," Jones adds with a slight smile, "he could go 24-8."

But wins, as the Braves made painfully clear to Santana in beating him last weekend, are never a sure thing.

Braves' right-hander Tim Hudson switched from the AL to the NL before the 2005 season and won as many games (43) in his first three NL seasons as he did in his last three AL seasons. He says the transition from one league to the other is not nearly as breezy as some make it out to be.

"Can he better than he was in the American League? Sure," Hudson says of Santana. "But can I see him having a little bit of problem, moreso than you think? I can see that, too. In the American League, you can get some big innings put on you but also cruise through five or six innings with zeroes [because] there are bigger swings top to bottom but more swings and misses. A lot of people who come over [to the NL] think they're just going to roll through the lineups. It's a different kind of baseball."

Of course, Santana is a different kind of talent. If he's not the best pitcher in either league, he can see the hairs on the back of the neck of whoever's in front of him. A Cy Young winner in '04 and '06, he comes to the NL still young (he turned 29 last month), healthy, smart and as a fierce competitor.

"He can dominate anybody, any lineup, at any time," says Jones.

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