The 4 guys mentioned wouldnt even be in the top 10 of the yankees or redsox farms. Its looking like the wins have been burned.

Santana for a clutch of middling prospects.  Not one of these guys is a legitimate blue chip prospect.  Conceivably, all of them could amount to very little.

Gomez may be fast but, with the way he hits, he better play a great defensive cf.

Why is Guerra rated highly?  He's young but I don't see it in the numbers. Must need a scout's eye-view to see it, I suppose

Humber and Mulvey are, meh.  #4 or #5 starters.

Qunatity, not quality, it seems to me.

i'd take lester, lowrie and crisp in a heartbeat now over those 4...like damn.

And that's worth a lot to me personally.

I'm not sure I couldn't get comfortable with this package, but I wish there was another position player or two added in, even if it wasn't studs. Just so we aren't back to carrying 15 potential #3 pitchers on our 40 man roster.

I do like Gomez better than Ellsbury.
I can see the argument that Guerra has a higher ceiling than Lester (not saying he's a better pickup, just a better chance of becoming a #1)
And Humber and Mulvey gives us MLB ready pitchers, just not of the quality we were looking for. Maybe this allows us to use Baker/Bonser/Slowey to get us value in trade (3B, SS, etc.)

I wasn't a huge fan of the Red Sox package(s) but either of those packages beats this one hands-down.  A slew of middling players for the best pitcher in the game?

Humber and Mulvey are #3 type pitchers possibly better. Guerra could be A star if his projections pan out. Gomes is faster then reyes for sure and has a great glove, Another year in AAA could make Gomez a star also. Not all mets fans are happy with this trade either.

If F-Mart ends up being part of the deal, I am happy.  If not, well then I start grasping at straws to console myself:

At least it's over?
These guys could prove me wrong?

Yeah, looking for some kind of soothing balm here.

Gomez doesn't excite me.  We already have a Pridie.  I guess Gomez has more upside, but I really am no more enthused about him than I am Pridie.  Really, it might as well have been Church if you ask me (please let it not be that insisting on Gomez cost us F-Mart!!!)

Uh, I guess it turns out John Manuel is high on Gomez, so there's something...

Mulvey and Humber could both start in MLB this year.

Gomez was called up early last year and hit about 240. he is raw and has to work on his pitching selection. A year in AAA and he could be huge

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/stats/individual_stats_player.jsp?c_id=nym&playerID=460576

I hate hate hate this.  WHY DIDN'T THEY WAIT 5 MORE DAYS!  THE ANGELS WOULD HAVE UPPED THE STAKES!

Grrrrrrr!

...Mr. Santana, will you please take $100mm over the years 2009-2013; giving you a total of $113mm over the next six years?

...NO!

...Will you continue to talk about an extension and allow us to trade you in July if we cannot work anything out?

...NO!

...OH?

...Mr. Red Sox GM, are your two deals still on the table?

...NO, now that the Yankees are out of it.

...OK!

...Mr. Mets GM, what will you give us, PLEASE?

Don't Blame Bill Smith or the Twins management on this one.  Maybe blame them for not signing him a year or two ago...but not for what is happening now.

In fact, it's bad.  It's a bad return for Santana; the situation has not worked out.

There is a non-zero chance here that the Twins got no players who will ever be average major leaguers.  Seriously.  Gomez may very well never learn to hit, and Guerra is so far away and TINSTAPP and such, that it might really work out that way.

There's risk in any deal, but this deal strikes me as all risk, with very limited reward.  What's Gomez's best case?  Given that none of these guys have anything resembling pristine performance records, the risk is just too high.  

with the thought that Johan will not pitch for either the Yankees or the Red Sox. It would have made me sick to see him in either uniform. The Mets are actually kind of endearing in an underachieving, bumbling, Cubs-esque way.

Just heard him on ESPN say that, essentially, the Twins got screwed.  Both NYY and Boston pulled back their offers lately.  He said that none of these prospects would be top 10 in either the Yankees or Red Sox systems (not sure that that is true).

Gomez is OK.  Mulvey is mediocre.  Humber is a former prospect turned bust (not sure he is that bad, but).  Guerra is a decent prospect at A ball. None is a top-flight prospect.

Basically his reaction was similar to ours here - the Twins got considerably less than they could have a month ago.

..take a close look at his numbers.  Now I know that there is more to pitching than numbers and without seeing scouting reports, etc., we don't really know everything about these playes.  But we just collectively voted Swarzak the top prospect in the system.  Now some are saying that Mulvey isn't worth much.  Well, if you look closely at the numbers at AA this year...Mulvey's numbers are very similar to Swarzak.  He is a few months older, had a few less strikeouts and pitched for the entire year.  His ERA, innings, WHIP, etc. were amongst the top 5 or 6 pitchers in the league.

This deal is horse shit.  They better do something and quick for the rotation.  Did Baltimore pull out of the Bedard trade with Seattle to see what we would trade for him after the Johan trade?  that would make me feel alot better.

What is it worth to you to have Santana in the National League?  

a) If Santana went to the Red Sox or Yankees, we would potentially have to face him twice during the regular season, plus once or twice in the playoffs.  So this is avoided.

b) How many additional wins would Boston or NY gain each season having Santana in their rotation?  I would think that Santana would win 5-10 more games the #4 starters we'd take away from those teams in any trade (this is based solely on gut feel, not on any statistics.  Are there statistics for that kind of thing?  also assuming Lester and Hughes will be 4 or 5 in their rotations next season, and possibly longer).  Considering we will be fighting those two teams for the wild card each year, those 5-10 wins could make a huge difference.  

If the ultimate goal is to make the playoffs and win the world series, trading him to the NL has real value.

billsmith@twinsbaseball.com

You guys are intelligent...let him know you know the prospects.  My opinion is you lose credibility if you don't know the players or don't tell him you do (if you do).

twins fans would you rather have johan for 1 distracting year and then watch him walk like torii did? i like this deal because it gives us a lead off hitter and we dont have to use brendan harris in the lead off spot and philip humber might make the team out of spring training after pitching in the majors before with the mets. mulvey has rosen through the mets system and reminds me of kevin slowey because he spent little time in the minors and pitched decently in the majors last year and is a front runner for a rotation spot this spring and guerra could become a future ace, so would you really like 2 future first round picks who might never make it out of A ball instead of these new twins, 3 of them could help us out next year and first round picks might never pan out. so do what you got to do bill smith i support your decision 100%.

Due to this trade, will Minnesota be looking to unload further?
People in Chicago are thinking the Twins maybe sending Nathan to the north side for prospects.
I heard this a couple months ago, but haven't heard anything since.

the twins said that no matter what happened with johan they would not deal nathan and now that johan has cleared up some money they might resign him now, but they also could trade him if they dont reach a contract extension also.

I have some lingering questions I hope some people in Twinkietown could help me out with

I'm not a stats guy as much as everyone else and have no business rating prospects, but I do watch about 152 Twins game a year and I tend to agree with CMATHEWSON.  I agree that Bill Smith's hands were likely tied but I would have relished one last year with Santana and the two picks over what we got from the Mets.  It was a beautiful thing to watch Johan pitch.  

Moreover, if Liriano is to form as everyone says with Santana, skinny boof, Nathan, Cuddyer, morneau, mauer, delly, a strong bullpun, an improved leftside of the infield, and some patchwork in center (i.e. lofton) - who says we couldn't make Detroit sweat a bit?  A lot of what ifs, but I think it would have been a lot of fun and they could have been serious contenders.  Moreover, we aren't jeopardizing our future here - we are just not getting anything for Santana at the end of the year besides the 2 draft picks, and it seems arguable that we didn't get much for him anyways at present.  So my question is why not keep him for one last farewell year?

Tying into this thought/rant ~ why are we so geared up for 2010?  Even if we fielded the worst team in baseball, the stadium would still sellout for 2 years straight because everyone would want to see it.  It sort of behoves us to have our best team in 2010-2011 because you can't doublebook seats at the new stadium.  So, if there ever was a time to mortgage the future and win now, wouldn't these next few years be the time to do it?

Again, along these lines - is it better to be competitive every year, but never be good enough to win the world series or is it better to follow the Cleveland Indians approach since the 1990s - Rebuild, develop, and then when you're close add a few veteran free agents and then dump and begin rebuilding.  I would argue that one world series win every 15 years along with up and down in between seasons is better than just 15 seasons of average to competitive baseball.  Am I wrong?

Finally, my last question/insight is if the great trade wasn't there, why didn't we explore just trading him for a boatload of cash.  If Dice-K's team got $50 million just for negotiation rights why couldn't we hawk Johan for 100 million and just put that money in a lock box to gain interest for when we need to re-sign one of our prized players in the future?  Obviously, the pohlads could not be given the combination to the lock box, but doesn't that make more sense than just taking what you can get from the Mets?  

The state of the game is such that...

• when it comes to on-the-field results, 75% of the post-season qualifiers come from a small set of teams.
  
• when it comes to superstars, the highest paid (not always the best) players gravitate to a small set of teams.

There is approximately a 50% correlation between the above 2 sets of teams.

The Twins are not anywhere close to being among either of the above sets of teams. The Twins' post-season appearances over the past six years will not be repeated over the next six years. I'd bet on one freak post-season appearance in the next five or so years. Gardy and Andy are great guys, but they are not baseball geniuses.

The Twins fans' best hope is that the Pohlad's sell the club; realistically, one can't hope for that in, at a minimum, the next four years.

Farewell Johan, you were the most reliably excellent Twin since Kirby (with a solid nod of recognition to Joe Nathan).

this was the best move for the Mets. I'm a Mets fan and not dicrediting Johan, he is by far the best pitcher in MLB. But i was very excited to see what these prospects we gave up for him were going to do this year.

Gomez is absolutely the fastest guy i have ever seen run to a flyball and some balls that guys would not get to he routinely was waiting for them to come down. Of course his bat is the question. But i think he is ready to come around in the next 2 years, he is very young and needs to learn some discipline. I think he'll benefit from a lineup that doesnt have a pitcher batting in it. A change of scenery from the spotlight of NY will no doubt help also.

Guerra is only 18 i believe but is said to have the best fastball in NY since Gooden, I admit though he will be a long term project.

I've always liked Mulvey and Humber and my bet is these two guys will be in starting rotations for some time once they have a little more chance at establishing themselves. The media is tough in NY and they never really got their full chance IMO. In Minnesota they actually may get that chance now with having the media not know everytime they take a ***t.

Dont overlook that the Mets farm system has become much better in recent years and these 4 guys were all pretty much at the top. These guys were garnering alot of attention and everyone was hoping to see them in the very near future.

Throw in the fact that the Mets have to give something like 140 mil to Santana now and im not so sure this deal was all that great. Its more like good, but right now more hype than anything. Give it some time and we'll see how it pans out. If Johan goes down with an injury i'll certainly be disappointed that all that money will be sitting.

2 things.

1) The no-trade clause we gave to Santana was an excellent deal. It got him to sign for a cheaper contract than he would have gotten as a free agent. In other words, we didn't get forced to trade him for MUCH less 3 years ago, and then watch him win a bunch of Cy Youngs.

2) This trade can't be judged ex-post, as in, if he gets injured it was a good trade, if the prospects don't turn out it was bad. You have to look at this from everything known right now. My position is that, right now, we would be stupid to sign him to the contract he wants. As for the relative value of the prospects offered by different teams, I have some hope for this set. In Guerra and Gomez we got two high ceiling prospects at the positions we need them. Plus the quantity of MLB ready pitchers that the Twins always want. You can argue that Hughes would have been better, and maybe Ellsbury, but for people who were upset that we weren't going for "quality", no other offer had two extremely high ceilings.

I think the Mets really win. They got such an important guy!