Forty-six years into the team’s inglorious history, no Mets pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter, let alone a perfect game. Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, and David Cone, among others, have done so after leaving the team, but it is a proven fact that no man can while wearing blue and orange, summon the vitality needed to make 27 outs in straight order. This is an unalterable rule of baseball, like the distance between the bags.

When Johan Santana set down the first nine batters he faced yesterday while making no visible effort, then, the question was not whether some Florida Marlin would break up the perfecto, but how, and how absurdly. In the bottom of the fourth, the question was answered. Hanley Ramirez, the brilliant Florida shortstop who has hit .352 against left-handed pitchers in his career, wound himself into a corkscrew trying to reach a changeup that floated just off the outside part of the plate, like a feather settling down on a light breeze. This left him behind in the count 1–2, and set up perfectly for a 90-mph fastball that tailed back across the plate, brushing (as replays confirmed) the lower rim of the strike zone. Santana walked off the mound, Ramirez muttered, and umpire Rick Reed called the thing a ball.

From there events went as they had to go. Ramirez eventually drew a walk and came home when Josh Willingham lined a looping slider into the left field stands. These were the only runs their team would score; one darkly suspects, though, that had Santana been wearing the colors of any of the major leagues’ 29 other teams, the Marlins’ fate would have been far, far worse.

Despite these fine results, and Santana’s excellent final line — seven innings pitched, eight strikeouts, two walks, three hits, and a win — a casual Mets fan, knowing little more than that his or her team had traded for the best pitcher in baseball over the winter, might have been slightly underwhelmed watching yesterday’s game. Santana is not 100 feet tall, does not throw flaming rods of molten iron, and betrays very little that would mark him as a supreme ace. Generously listed at 6 feet tall, with a fastball that didn’t break 92 yesterday, his game is about ease, motion, and misdirection.

Santana, like Greg Maddux, often looks like he’s playing catch on the mound, and tosses off buttery changeups that at their best leave spectators thinking that maybe hitting a baseball isn’t so hard after all. This is no criticism; it’s what makes him so good. Any standard issue no. 1 starter can throw a pitch that makes you wonder how anyone could possibly hit it. Only an exceptional few can win while making you wonder how they could possibly have made the batter miss.

The Mets’ new ace routinely does this. Yesterday, for instance, what should have been the called

third strike in Ramirez’s fourth-inning at bat was a perfect match for the first pitch the man saw in his first at-bat — another beautiful, tailing low fastball that danced over the bottom of the zone at 90 mph and seemed like it should have been golfed 500 feet. Ramirez swung over the top of that one, and looked a fool. Having learned his lesson, he held off, and was only saved by a sketchy call. What to do with a pitch like that?

This is the art in what Santana does, and he does it all the time. He throws pitches batters can’t reach and can’t afford to take, and does so at the right times. Putting hitters in lose-lose situations this way is the definition of effective pitching, and the ability to do it is far more valuable than a 97 mph fastball.

Right after giving up the home run, to give another example, Santana led Jorge Cantu with the exact same tempting pitch Ramirez had done nothing with, and finished him off with the same slider that Willingham had cranked out of the yard. Note over the next few games you watch how many times a pitcher, having given up a home run, throws the same pitch in the same location in the next at bat. That one pitch says a lot about why Santana is so rich and so well regarded.

Not too much should be made, certainly, of one start against a lineup stacked with flawed and outright weak hitters, but it’s worth noting that while Santana’s style and approach were on fine display yesterday, there’s still more to his game. Last year, his fastball averaged 93 mph for the season, and one can reasonably expect that as the season wears on, he’ll start reaching back for the occasional truly hard heater. He’ll also certainly be more effective as he learns hitter tendencies in a new league; the sort of setup work that Ramirez saw will, by the end of the year, get more intricate and involved. Nothing he does should, in the end surprise — not even a perfect game.

tmarchman@nysun.com