BALTIMORE - When Ervin Santana is at his best, mesmerizing hitters and recording outs as if on automatic pilot, it's hard to tell for sure how he's doing it.
Take Tuesday's 2-0 shutout of the Orioles at Camden Yards, for instance. Twins manager Paul Molitor said Santana relied on his fastball to ruin Baltimore's timing. Orioles left fielder Trey Mancini said Santana's off-speed pitches were the most effective. Baltimore manager Buck Showalter said Santana's changeup was the killer.
And Santana? He shrugged and smiled and dispensed with the question like it was just another helpless Orioles hitter. The answer, basically: all of the above.
"My breaking ball was pretty good," he grudgingly admitted after becoming the first Twin since Carl Pavano in 2010 to record two shutouts in a season. "I was able to locate my fastball, and then finish them off with the slider."
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
Well, except for an extended run of pitching mastery that Twins fans haven't witnessed since another pitcher named Santana a decade ago. Oh wait, maybe you're not witnessing it: Santana is particularly stellar on the road. He's thrown 18 consecutive scoreless innings away from Target Field, and in his four road starts this season, he's given up one run in 29 innings — that's an ERA of 0.31.
Santana surrendered a second-inning single to Welington Castillo and a fifth-inning single to Jonathan Schoop, and he issued a couple of walks, too. But the 34-year-old Twins ace was virtually perfect otherwise, getting the Orioles to take awkward swings and shake their heads in wonder at whatever those pitches were. Only Schoop reached third base, after a third-inning walk.
And once the Twins provided the righthander with a lead, on Byron Buxton's run-scoring single through a drawn-in infield in the fifth, Santana simply became efficiency personified. He needed six pitches to retire Adam Jones, Manny Machado and Mark Trumbo, the heart of Baltimore's order, in the sixth inning, then threw, whew, seven more in the seventh. Santana retired the final 14 hitters he faced — and needed only 42 pitches to do it.