"Everything starts April 6, but if it's going to be me or somebody else, it's tough to say right now," Santana said about Opening Day. "Right now, on paper, I'm supposed to be the one. But we've got to wait - what? - five more weeks to know that."Obviously, this isn't catastrophic news. He's implying he'll be able to make a turn in the rotation, but maybe not the first game of the season. So he starts, say, game four instead of game one. That's not a big deal.
The problem, to me, is that he's acknowledging he may not be ready to go five weeks from now. Most competitors would say something like, oh, I'll definitely be fine for Opening Day, I'm not worried at all. The fact that a man like Santana is reluctant to say something like this tells me he's worried. If he's worried on Feb. 28, that's not really fun news for the Mets.
