While we wait for the Mets and Santana to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of a contract extension, I thought we’d take a look at what people are saying about the trade and what the future holds for the Yankees after abstaining from obtaining the Cy Young lefty.
I find it interesting that Jim Callis of Baseball America, the one guy who actually follows the minor leagues, is not getting more press this morning in the papers and the blogosphere. Here is what he had to say about the package of players the Twins are getting:
Minnesota might be better off if those talks collapse, giving new Twins GM Bill Smith a chance to find a better return for Santana. While he’s going to command possibly the richest contract ever given to a pitcher, Santana is the best pitcher in the game. And Smith didn’t get enough for him.
Guerra (No. 2), Gomez (No. 3), Mulvey (No. 4) and Humber (No. 7) all ranked prominently on our Mets Top 10 Prospects list. But there’s simply too much risk involved in this deal for Minnesota.
The two best prospects in the trade, Guerra and Gomez, come with high ceilings but also lack a lot of polish and have a long ways to go to reach their potential. The odds that they both will do so are slim.
Guerra has an 89-94 mph fastball and a promising changeup and he’s only 18. But he also has a below-average breaking ball, has yet to pitch more than 90 innings in a season and while he has held his own, he hasn’t dominated. Gomez had the best package of tools in the Mets system, but his bat is still extemely raw as evidenced by his career .273/.331/.384 averages in the minors.
Mulvey has an arsenal of four average pitches and throws strikes. He’s not overpowering and he’s most likely a No. 4 starter. Since having Tommy John surgery in 2005, Humber hasn’t fully regained the stuff that made him the No. 3 overall pick in the 2004 draft. His curveball is his best pitch but his fastball now sits at 87-91 mph. He too projects as a No. 4 starter.
So let’s see here, according to Callis the Twins received two guys with “high ceilings” who lack polish and two guys who don’t project out to be more that “No. 4 starters”? When I read Callis’s post yesterday I felt like calling Omar Minaya myself and congratulating him for finding a sucker to take those players. Guerra and Gomez seem like they have a better chance of success than Humber and Mulvey, but still, Bill Smith did a bad job here in my opinion.
Aaron Gleeman give us a glimpse from the perspective of someone who follows the Twins closely:
…getting Gomez, Guerra, Mulvey, and Humber from the Mets likely beats keeping Santana for one more season and taking a pair of draft picks when he departs as a free agent. A toolsy center fielder who hasn’t shown much offensively, a very raw 18-year-old pitcher, and a pair of MLB-ready middle-of-the-rotation starters is no one’s idea of a great haul for Santana, but it’s not a horrible one and Smith may have backed himself into a corner by not jumping on better offers immediately.
The end result of a bad situation handled poorly is a mediocre package of players that has no one excited, but even acquiring Hughes or Ellsbury wouldn’t have made losing Santana easy to live with. Trading away one of the best players in franchise history while he’s still at the top of his game is a horrible thing and doing so without getting the best possible return for him is extremely disappointing, but the Santana trade still has a chance to work out in the Twins’ favor. It just could have been better.
If the reports are accurate, that the Yankees really did have a package of Phil Hughes, Melky Cabrera and a prospect on the table and the Red Sox had two packages, one centered around Jacoby Ellsbury and one around Jon Lester, then yes, the Twins really could have done better. Hughes, one of the top three pitching prospects in all of baseball, was dangled out there before the Winter Meetings, ripe for the taking. All Smith had to do was check with the Red Sox and see if they wanted to up there offer. But he overplayed his hand. Yes that’s right, I said it, he overplayed his hand. You can say he was patient or just fielding all the offers, but the fact is he held on to Santana too long and interest from the Red Sox and Yankees waned.
The Yankees, well, more like Hank Steinbrenner, was quite desperate to make a splash for Santana. I believe he would have pulled the trigger on a deal back before the meetings began because he wanted a big name. Having to wait like he did gave GM Brian Cashman and his brother the Hal the chance to talk him out of it from two different fronts - don’t trade the young talent we’ve developed (Cashman’s argument) and let us have some financial restraint (Hal’s argument). In the end, Hank held on and I think he Yankees will be better for it. Certainly if the Mets are winning Championships across town and if the Yankees are playing second fiddle to the Red Sox and if the prospects don’t live up to expectations, then sure, maybe you should have made a deal. But isn’t that a lot of if’s?
Sanatana, when it comes down to it, is one player who is commanding a huge price. Is he worth it? I believe yes, but some will disagree. Could the Yankees have afforded him? Of course. In fact, they could have probably afforded five Santanas. At some point, however, you have to realize that other teams are winning without the high-priced talent that the Yankees have come to covet over the last eight years.
I’m certainly no expert on the Yankees farm system, but even I can see that the talent, especially in the pitching corps, is overflowing at the moment. There are guys like Ohlendorff, Horne, Bettan
