Yesterday, the NY Mets traded four prospects to the Minnesota Twins for Johan Santana. Santana is currently the best left handed pitcher in baseball, probably the best pitcher in baseball. The reason for the trade is because the Twins could not sign Santana to a contract extension and instead of losing their rights to him after next season and getting only two compensatory draft picks, the Twins decided it was better to trade him for prospects.
At the beginning of the off-season, the Santana sweepstakes was thought to be the most dramatic event during the December winter meetings. Rumors were flying left and right but was eventually whittled down from as much as eight teams to two or three. The front runners last year were thought to be either the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees. Though Mets GM Omar Minaya always stated the Mets were involved. Most reporters gave the Mets little chance of landing Santana because the highly touted Mets prospects were not too well thought of outside the Mets organization.
In the end, Minaya proved all the early prognosticators wrong and landed the biggest prize of this off-season. The four prospects are: Philip Humber (P), Deolis Guerra (P), Kevin Mulvey (P) and Carlos Gomez (OF). While I think all four prospects can become good major league players, none of them will be as good as Santana. In case you did not know this, Santana will turn 29 this upcoming season. He has already won two Cy Young awards in his career. The future is bright for the Mets and the future is now.
Lets go Mets!
(On a side note, I hope this trade will be better than the trade almost two decades ago when the Mets traded prospects to the Twins for former Cy Young winner Frank Viola.)
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I'm sorry. Even at a relatively young age and some might even say at the prime, Santana will not be what I called a "savior" for the Mets. Statistically, he is great, but also at a decline if you compare his numbers of last year vs of the previous 2. The W-L records might actually stay at where he performed last year, as the Mets might not even be as offensive powerful as the Twins were last year. And even if they were, the Twins bullpen was much more dependable than the ones that the Mets had/have.
Another pitcher that will be paid millions to just win 17 wins at most and lose 12-14 if they decide to just bring him to pitch over 220 innings.. those 200+ innings logged will cause him to just be as effective only in the first 170+ innings.
So toward the end of the contract, you have a high priced lefty bullpen/closer guy, which he probably make a great replacement for the Billy "the not so much of a Kid" in 2-3 years.
But overall, the Mets got a good deal considering their outfield prospects tend to just stink, so Mr. Gomez will be the next Mr. Milledge. But I still stand that the Yankees were right to not budge.
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