I feel Twins made a wrong choice to trade Santana to Mets?

They should have traded him to Boston in return for Bucholtz + Ellsbury





Or Bucholtz + Ellsbury + Lester in return for Santana + prospect





Mets just gave Twins a bag of potatoes in return for Santana





Teams must realize, if you are attempting to make a trade and the best offer is from your division neighbor, they should not hesitate to make the trade with the division neighbors.|||The Yankees and Red Sox refused to play the blackmail game and the Twins moved a pitcher they couldn't afford and plowed the saved money into player development.





I consider that a good trade!





But, contrary to your post, neither Yankees or Red Sox are in AL Central.





However, I would never trade a star player to a divisional competitor with getting a star in return.





That is a form of suicide, sending your best player to a division competitor for nothing. C,mon.|||Well the Yankees were offering Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera I believe. Hughes is ok, but I don't think he's that much better than Chamberlain. Chamberlain just never got a fair shake from the NY media. He was pretty good last year as a starter all the way till early September. Hughes' second half collapse this year didn't receive as much coverage. Maybe because he's the next Great White Hope. If Chamberlain goes to the NL, he could dominate. Hell, even Ian Kennedy is doing great in the NL. Melky is a bust (not as bad as Carlos Gomez though) and I would rather take Brett Gardner.


Ellsbury isn't that much better than Denard Span. The Sox would never give up both Lester and Buchholz. But Buchholz alone make this a great trade. If Buchholz can pull off such a low ERA in AL East, then he could dominate anywhere.


The Twins were retarded for trading Johan for Carlos Gomez (he sucked with the Mets), Phil Humber (already considered a bust at the time of the trade), and some other pitchers.|||Yeah, I felt like they should have gotten more for Santana and yet I know they were talking a lot with both the Red Sox and Yanks and neither one of them seemed willing to give fair value for him. If you can get fair value in a trade then trade with anybody but if all anybody is willing to offer is a bag of potatoes then make that trade into the other league so perhaps you will never have to come up against him. The fact that Santana was just a year off from free agency sort of put the other teams in the drivers seat on this deal because they knew the Twins had to either take what was offered right then or risk losing him with nothing to show for it a year later.|||I think the Mets made the wrong choice in trading for him.|||It all depends on the perspective you take. For argument sake though, I'm a Mets fan. So let's understand the circumstances of what we're talking about here. Everyone knows the Twins didn't have the money to sign Johan Santana long term. Even if they did, Plus, take into account they were anticipating the big budget of building a new stadium and they didn't know they were going to be in the postseason so soon.





They had also signed Morneau to a 6 year/80 million extension less then a week before trading Santana to the Mets. And then 1 1/2 months later in March 2008, they signed Joe Nathan to a 4 year/47 million extension. That is 127 million right there. The Mets invested 137.5 million into Santana beyond what was left on the last year of his contract in 2008.





The Twins had two of three financial choices: Joe Mauer, Johan Santana and a combo of Morneau and Nathan.





Which would you take?





The only year Santana effected the Twins was 2008. They were within one game of winning the AL Central. With Santana, they probably would have beat the White Sox out for the division. Interestingly, the Mets also ended up 1 game out. The won 89 games that season. You can make the argument the Mets would have barely been .500 without Santana that season. He won 16 games that year and led the NL with the best ERA. But he had 7 wins blown via blown saves. He came up 3rd in the Cy Young voting.





As sad as it sounds though, the Twins got back such a weak package that they may have been better off holding onto Santana just to get back 2 compensatory picks in the draft. In reality though, if the Twins couldn't do much in the '09 or '10 postseason, why would have it been different in '08 when they had less experience?





What the Twins should have done is jump on a good offer. The Red Sox offered the Twins one of Jon Lester or Jacoby Ellsbury. From what I remember, they preferred giving up Ellsbury. But they left Boston the choice. I'm not sure if Bucholz were the other prospect offered in the deal at the time. As for the Yankees, they offered one of Hughes or Ian Kennedy and Melky Cabrerra. Not having Cabrera didn't kill the Twins. You can compare him to what the Twins got out of Carlos Gomez whm they swapped for Weeks. While Hughes and Mulvey aren't even with the Twins organization anymore, I believe Guerra is still in their system.





The Yankees probably weren't giving up Chamberlain period. I'm not sure how involved Montero was in the talks at the time. The best trade opportunities would have come from Boston or the Yankees. In reality, the best choices would have been take either Ellsbury or Hughes straight up. I'm sur ehte Yankees and Red Sox are happy about such because of the price it would have cost. Otherwise, I doubt they could have afforded Sabathia or Lackey. Or even Ian Kennedy and Melky Cabrera could have been acceptable if they pulled backed on the other two guys.





As Mets fans are learning now though, Santana is getting older and his arm is more in question. We believe he'll recover. And he has been great the last 2 seasons. But it was a high price tag. We were lucky to not have to trade much to get him. But he's eating up a huge chunk of payroll.