Getting Johan: Lucky or Good?

Last night I outlined what appeared to be the best offers from the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets in their pursuit of Johan Santana. Some argued that the Twins simply chose the package most appealing to them. However, there may have been an alternate reality to the proceedings.

Critics (I choose my wording carefully - not talent evaluators or scouts, but rather sports writers) didn't need more than a few hours to start speculating as to why the Twins accepted a seemingly inferior deal for their ace pitcher. Now I'm not going to dismiss their hypothesis outright, but for a general sports writing body that never considered the Mets as a serious player for Johan Santana, it seems convenient for them to ruminate on what extenuating circumstances could have led to the Mets winning the Santana Sweepstakes.

So the theory goes: Red Sox had their offers separately featuring Jon Lester and Jacoby Ellsbury. Yankees had their offer featuring both Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera. The Twins saw these offers as means to up the ante and see how far the bidding war would go. GMs Epstein and Cashman got tired of playing Minnesota's waiting game and took their marquee names off the table. What was left? The Mets' third rate proposal of far-from-Major-League-ready prospects.

Who knows to what extent this may or may not have been the case? Either way, it's been pretty uniformly acknowledged, Mets GM Omar Minaya pulled off some serious highway robbery. And the argument can always be made, "Will the four prospects be better than Santana's performance long term?" But a prospect is just that - a prospect.

Only time will tell if this is a Zambrano for Kazmir deal, or a Piazza for Wilson, Yarnell and Goetz deal.