Santana a New York Met! Wait…Really?!

I’m a Yankee fan, I’ve made this excessively clear in this space. However, I am not one who basks in New York Mets misfortune. In fact, I am happy for them and their fans whenever they are successful. Anything involving the name Santana that wasn’t followed by ‘traded to Boston’ was ok with me. So sour grapes couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

So with that being said, Santana is a New York Met after the Twins gobbled up a package of four prospects headlined by Carlos Gomez?! If this young man isn’t the second coming of Willy Mays or Ken Griffey Jr. then the above sentence might be featured in a future documentary called Crazy but True: Terrible Decisions Exposed.
I love baseball but I don’t pretend to be one of these guys with season tickets to minor league games, who subscribes to baseball prospectus. I just know who is informed and then read their facts and stats to form my opinions. Keith Law writes for ESPN but before that he was a long-time baseball scout who obviously still has ties to baseball and scouting. He calls Carlos Gomez “Coco Crisp with a better arm”. I’ll let that sink in.
Coco Crisp, the same guy that Boston is dying to trade so that Jacoby Elsbury can take his place in the starting lineup. But I guess it’s ok because Carlos Gomez has an arm. I hope he can pitch because the Twins have a hole in their rotation that won’t be fixed any time soon.
I want to make it clear that I’m not bashing the Twins because they didn’t take the Red Sox or Yankee offers. They made a calculated decision that World War 3 would erupt amongst the two rivals and the Yankees would finally offer Hughes and Kennedy and then maybe the Red Sox would offer Lester and Elsbury or even Buchholz and Elsbury. These scenarios were unlikely but possible. The Twins gambled and it didn’t work out.
The problem I have with the ways things turned out is that the Twins didn’t get more from the Mets. Baseball America says the Twins received the Mets 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th best prospects. For the best pitcher in the galaxy. Sure this makes complete and utter sense. How did the Twins not get Fernando Martinez the Mets top prospect? Or Mike Pelfrey, the pitcher that even my 79 year old grandmother knows is better than Phil Humber, the “best” pitcher who was sent to the Twins?

The Mets needed Santana really badly and now they are a formidable force in the national league that should open as the favorite to make it to the World Series. He tops a rotation which includes Pedro Martinez, now operating solely on guile and a great changeup, the enigmatic Oliver Perez, and the solid John Maine.
I think the Twins had the leverage here. If they didn’t, and Santana wanted to be traded before the season started then they should have dealt him in December. To deal him now for sixty cents on the dollar has made a lot of people in Queens happy and left a lot in Minnesota appalled. The Twins general manager just got the job this offseason. With moves like this he won’t have it for much longer.