Mets’ Santana likely out of WBC

As of right now, Venezuela is a decent long-shot bet on WagerWeb.com to win next month’s World Baseball Classic, but those odds (currently +1000) are likely to go up a bit now that presumed staff ace Johan Santana won’t be participating.

Santana told The New York Post that he plans to decline an invitation to pitch for his native Venezuela in the upcoming tournament at the request of the Mets, who want to be careful with his recovery.

“I’ll do what they ask me to do,” Santana said Monday after a conditioning workout at the Mets’ spring-training complex in Florida. “I just want to get ready for the season.”

Santana underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee Oct. 1 to repair a torn meniscus, four days after a great outing against the Marlins during the second-to-last game of the 2008 season. He shut out Florida on three hits to allow New York to avoid elimination for a day. That start was on three days’ rest — rather than the normal four days — after throwing a career-high 125 pitches in his previous start. The left-hander’s knee had become an issue earlier in September.

Santana’s first season in the National League produced a 16-7 record, the lowest ERA (2.53) in the NL, an NL-high innings total of 234 1/3 and a third-place finish in the NL Cy Young Award voting.

He threw 18 pitches off a mound Tuesday for the first time since that surgery. Santana said he plans to follow that on Thursday with his first official bullpen session, a 25-30 pitch outing.

After Tuesday’s outing, he still held out hope of playing in the WBC.

“Right now I’m playing. But again, I haven’t talked to Omar (GM Omar Minaya) personally. I think it’s coming up this weekend. So it’s about getting together, seeing where we are and gong from there. I would love to play but I’m not going to go against any decisions that they take. I’m an employee here,” he said.

No way Minaya lets him go. Mets camp will be missing several stars because of the WBC. Among Among the Mets scheduled to play in the WBC are David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and new closer Frankie Rodriguez.

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