A meeting of the minds: twins ace Johan Santana and catcher Joe Mauer reveal how they get inside the heads of opponents

Sporting News, The, July 7, 2006 by Pat Borzi

When Twins lefthander Johan Santana pitches, hitters usually are in for a rough day. The 2004 A.L. Cy Young Award winner and last year's major league strikeouts leader is on pace for another big season.

On June 13 at the Metrodome, Santana matched up with the Red Sox's Curt Schilling in one of the marquee pitching duels of the season's first half. The next day, Santana and catcher Joe Mauer sat down with the Sporting News to go inside Santana's start and provide a rare glimpse of how an elite pitcher thinks his way through a game against one of the toughest lineups in baseball.

* The test run

Before the game, Santana and Mauer meet to go over their game plan. Santana, as is his custom, doesn't study video or read scouting reports. No matter who he's facing, Santana focuses more on using his strengths than on exploiting opponents' weaknesses.

"When we go into our scouting meetings and talk about how we're going to attack hitters, he doesn't listen to that," Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson says.

Later, Mauer heads to the bullpen to catch Santana's warmup. Santana feels only "OK" at the beginning.

"I didn't feel like I was at my best," he says. "But as I was warming up, I felt better and better and better."

"Usually I have a pretty good idea of what be has in the bullpen," Mauer says. "I could tell his change and his fastball were going to be pretty good."

With Schilling taking the ball for Boston, they need to be.

* Establish the fastball

Everything works off the fastball for Santana. From the outset, he and Mauer need to know two things: 1) Can Santana spot the pitch where he wants it? 2) What will home plate umpire Jeff Nelson give him on the corners? "I want to make sure my two-seam fastball is working," Santana says. "That's my best pitch, and it's going to make my other pitches look even better. That's what I try to do all the time."

Santana opens with a pair of two-seamers that Coco Crisp takes for strikes--the first on the outside corner, the second at the knees. Crisp fouls back a four-seamer at the letters, then flails at a changeup for Strike 3.

Nelson's strike zone is fair--not tight but not overly generous. Santana can work with this.

Against Mark Loretta, Santana misses down and in with a two-seamer, then throws a two-seamer for a strike on the outside corner and another one that is fouled off. Mauer has Santana bounce a slider to see if Loretta will chase it. He doesn't, but Loretta can't hold up on the changeup that comes next.

Next up is David Ortiz, a former teammate of Santana and the A.L.'s RBI leader. Ortiz comes into the game 0-for-3 in his career against Santana. He's ready for a first-pitch fastball and gets it, but he pulls it hard and foul.

Santana's fastballs to Crisp and Loretta were 92 or 93 mph, but he dials up his first pitch to Ortiz to 95--which it better be if he wants to challenge Ortiz down and in.

Ortiz fouls off another 95-mph fastball inside. He is set up for the change, just as Crisp and Loretta were, but Mauer decides to go another way. "Maybe he was watching, maybe not," Mauer says. "We just thought we'd take a shot at the outside corner, come with another fastball and see what happened." Ortiz takes a two-seam fastball for Strike 3.

"If we missed there, we would have gone to something off-speed," Mauer says. "But he put it right on the corner. Ortiz was probably thinking something else."

"That situation, you're facing one of the best hitters in the game," Santana says. "I've got to go with my best pitch, especially early in the game. I figured he was looking for something else, not a fastball."

Anderson appreciates how Santana thinks along with a hitter.

"A lot of times he'll go out and throw a guy five straight fastballs. He'll come back to the dugout, and I'll say, 'Did you see him sitting on the changeup?' And he'll say, 'Yeah, I noticed that.' He has a sense of what the hitter is trying to do."

All but two Red Sox hitters take the first pitch the first time through the lineup, which makes it easy for Santana to get ahead in counts. He goes 0-1 on eight of the first nine batters. He strikes out the first five and six of the first seven; on each of those strikeouts, he gets ahead, 0-2 or 1-2.

He runs into trouble in the third inning after he shakes off Mauer for the only time in the game. Santana throws a 2-2 fastball to Trot Nixon, who drives the pitch to left-center for a double. Santana says he doesn't remember what Mauer originally called, and Mauer won't say.

"I feel really good with him when I'm thinking what to put down," Mauer says. "Usually the only times I get shakeoffs is when it's 1-2 or 0-2 and he wants to finish the batter right away instead of setting him up with another pitch. Sometimes he shakes me off to put something in the batter's head."

Alex Gonzalez follows Nixon's double with a single to left, which puts runners at the corners with one out. Schilling is pitching well, so Santana knows he can't afford to give up anything.