I am almost always opposed to trading talented prospects for high-priced veterans but Santana is a special case.
He is the best pitcher in baseball. And he's only 29. And some team is going to trade for him this year so waiting for him to hit free agency is not an option.
The Mets are reportedly ready to offer a deal centered around Carlos Gomez. The Mets would have to give up one of their top two pitching prospects, Pelfrey or Humber, but they can't afford to give up both because then they'd have no Pedro/El Duque injury insurance.
The Mets would probably have to offer two more prospects in the deal, though I can't imagine who, Kevin Mulvey, Mike Carp, Anderson Hernandez?
Chances are the Mets are not going to make a move for Santana because the Twins' recent acquisition of Delmon Young decreases their need for Carlos Gomez.
The Twins did trade their shortstop in that deal making it possible the Mets could trade Jose Reyes to the Twins for Santana.
Omar Minaya described such a move as "robbing Peter to pay Paul" but I think it is something to consider. Reyes is a high price to pay, but Santana may be the one guy who's worth it.
The Mets don't have any other options who can approximate the performance Santana would give them. But the Mets do have Carlos Gomez who could play rightfield and approximate (75% of his runs and steals totals with slightly lower on base and slugging percentages) Reyes's contributions while batting leadoff.
Other options for the Mets include Dan Haren, Joe Blanton and Dontrelle Willis. Blanton and Willis have been two of my favorites for a couple years now, but I would rather give up Gomez and 3 others for Santana than just Gomez for one of those three.
The reason being, in a short playoff series Santana provides a huge advantage because he's better than anyone the other team has. That pushes everyone else down, making Pedro (when healthy), Maine and Perez, the 2, 3 and 4 starters, much better and deeper than what almost any other team would have.
I know the danger of trading prospects, but we are not talking about Viktor Zambrano here. We are talking about the best pitcher in baseball.
It pains me to say this, but we can't do the trade. We just don't have as much to offer and I don't want to part with Reyes. Be a realist Paul, Reyes is too exciting for Mets brass to ever deal away. He's the type of player that fills the seats.
ReplyDeleteJohan is great. Johan will help you make the postsesason and maybe even win the whole damn thing. That would fill seats too. I want him so bad I would take him as my only Christmas present and have the tree be empty. But, he's a pitcher, and one that would require a huge extension. One arm injury later, and Mets fans are cursing Omar Minyaya and the deal becomes more infamous than Zambrano for Kazmir. There's no way Minyaya is going to have Reyes on the nightly highlight reels for another team for the next 10 years.
All that said, we don't have the arsenal to make the trade otherwise. This pains me immensely, since it was only 3 or 4 years ago that we were making fun of the Yankee system for being gutted. We haven't done any 3 blue chippers for 1 overpriced deadline star trades in years. Where the hell are all our prospects? I'm happy that we at least have Gomez and Fernandez. I don't know a whole lot about Mulvey. Was he our most recent draft pick?
It looks like we'll be losing Gomez this offseason for a pitcher. I truly hope that pitcher is Haren and not Bedard(unproven) or Willis(inconsistent). I bet Peterson says he can fix Willis in "5 minutes." Haha..
Haren isn't Santana but he does have a lot going for him. He's younger and still improving, where Santana seemed to regress a little, with those 35 homers he gave up a concerning stat. Haren is signed up for 3 more years for a total of 15 million, meaning the Mets can throw the 135 million or so they saved by getting Haren instead of Johan into something else.
Food for thought: It's not 100% that the trade happens now. The Twins could wait to assess in July and probably get almost the same deal they can get now. Delmon Young(to me at least) projects as better than Tori Hunter offensively for the upcoming season. Yes, they took a hit defensively, but that was a great trade. With Liriano back and the Hunter loss minimized by this recent deal they could be really good. If a healthy Johan and Liriano make it to the playoffs starting 4 games in a short series then I don't care if you're Murderer's Row, you're not beating them.
And if they do wait till July I think they'll be pleasantly surprised with where they stand and at that point they might not be able to make a trade if they're in 1st place. Even if brass wanted to, they couldn't or they'd lose their entire fan base. Think about it: Indians-overrated. White Sox-that's a joke. The Tigers are a real threat, so we'll have to see.
So if this happens, watch out. The Mets would throw Hank Steinbrenner type money to get this guy. I think if it came to money, the Mets would spend even more than the Yanks here. Unfortunately, this is a situation where the Yanks and Sox are actually more talented than we are, even though they've made more deadline deals(Abreu, Gagne) in recent years than we have. With Haren and Santana together, that would lock up the NL for the next 6 or 7 years. Minyaya should just call Greenberg and secretly tell him he'll go 200 million, and to have Johan use his no trade clause, citing a desire to test the market rather than negotiate with only 1 team. Haha, yes this is a joke but I do think things like that happen behind the scenes.
Sorry for the long post. Once I get going I just can't stop!