Santana perfect successor to Pedro
Posted: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 6:09 PM
No interested team needed Johan Santana more than the Mets.
Santana owns a no-trade clause that allows him to control his fate so for the Twins could there be any more incentive needed to push through a deal before pitchers and catchers report? Apparently not as the Mets have reached an agreement with the Twins to acquire Santana for four prospects -- outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra, and Kevin Mulvey.
To finalize the deal the Mets need to reach an agreement with Santana to extend his contract, which has one season left on it. The Mets will have to work quickly to get that done as they have a 48-to-72-hour window to do a new deal with the two-time Cy Young Award winner, who reportedly is seeking a $150 million contract extension over six or seven years.
This deal makes so much sense for the Mets. Their general manager Omar Minaya could not have had his team open the season without a true top-of-the-rotation ace. And there is no better successor to Pedro Martinez -- who once was that ace for the Mets -- than Santana. Martinez will still pitch, but the Mets and the rest of baseball weren't considering him a No. 1 starter at this advanced point in his career. So Martinez will likely slot in as the Mets' No. 2 starter and Santana becomes the new ambassador for the franchise while also adding an arm to the Mets’ staff that has averaged nearly 18 wins a season for the Twins over the last four years.
Minaya has made big trades before, beginning in 2002 when as then Expos general manager he pulled off a blockbuster that sent Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips from Montreal to Cleveland for Bartolo Colon. After joining the Mets he traded prospects to Florida in separate deals for Paul LoDuca and Carlos Delgado. Problem is once you make several of these kinds of deals, you get tagged. Fellow general managers wait you out, thinking they can squeeze you for an extra body or two. And I thought that was at work in the Santana talks. But the Mets held on to their “new” top prospect, outfielder Fernando Martinez, as well as Mike Pelfrey, a young pitcher who supposedly has solid potential but who mostly struggled in his stint last year in the bigs.
Time pressures had begun to infiltrate the Twins’ camp. Santana may have informed Minnesota that once he reported to Fort Myers for spring training, he would not approve a deal. Twins fans signaled their wish for a resolution during the team’s fan caravan through the Upper Midwest last week. And this scenario seems to be one in which everybody wins: the Twins receive four good, young prospects and see Santana leave the American League, the Mets get the elite starting pitcher they needed and now compare favorably to the Phillies and Braves in the NL East, and the Mets also get a veteran star to join their younger stars for the 2009 opening of their new ballpark. Also, neither the Yankees nor Red Sox lose in relation to each other -- one is OK with losing out on Santana as long as its chief rival did the same.
The Mets -- a team that has positioned itself as “friendly” for Spanish-speaking players -- add a high profile name who should help them to more wins and perhaps a World Series title, and they did not have to part with Martinez to make it happen. Seems Minaya has put another highlight on his resume.
Also on the Hot Stove front a new wrinkle has emerged this week with the word that Baltimore could be close to trading Erik Bedard for Seattle’s top prospect, outfielder Adam Jones, who would be the centerpiece of a four-player package sent to the Orioles. The possibility of a Bedard deal being built around Jones leads to another question. How could the Twins trade Santana without receiving a team’s top prospect (the Yankees’ Philip Hughes, Boston’s Jacoby Ellsbury, or the Mets’ Fernando Martinez) in return?
Remember the other dynamics at work in talks between the Orioles and Mariners: Baltimore owner Peter Angelos has yet to sign off on the Bedard deal and this is the litmus test of Andy MacPhail’s promised “autonomy” to rebuild the Orioles.
Twins new general manager Bill Smith, a good man trained by the highly respected MacPhail and former Twins general manager Terry Ryan, has made his first big deal. And he's banking on it being a good one for the Minnesota franchise just as MacPhail hopes moving Bedard to the Mariners (if it happens) will solidly jump start the rebuilding process in Baltimore.
