We're going to win Twins

I have been meaning to write this blog for quite some time now. Ever since the Twins traded Johan Santana, I’ve wanted to express my thoughts on it. Then spring training started, and that gave me more ideas about the upcoming Twins season. And now, they have began playing games. So figure it is about time that I let all of you know my thoughts on the upcoming Twins season. I’m sure you were all dying to know.
First, the Santana deal. Yes, it sucks. Having to trade the best pitcher in baseball sucks. Santana has done a marvelous job for us the past few years. He will me missed.
But it was the right move.
With the budget the Twins have, it is incredibly hard to justify spending 23 million a year on one player. That would be about a third of the their payroll last year on just one guy. Oh yeah, it is a guy who only plays once every five games. That’s about 35 starts a year. So you would give him more than 700,000 per start and pay him more than 1 million per victory. That seems like an awful lot to me. He had to go. It sucks, but it’s the truth.
That being said, I don’t know if they got the best offer. Obviously, having no personal knowledge of the trade talks between all the teams, I am subject to the rumors published in the paper and on websites. Who knows how accurate they really are. But if they were, the Twins may have let the best deal pass early in the offseason.
However, I cannot blame the Twins for passing. I honestly thought the Red Sox or the Yankees would step up their offer. I still can’t understand how they didn’t. Yes, they each have very good ball clubs now. But if they trade for Santana, they instantly make themselves the favorites for the World Series. Especially the Sox. How do they not put Santana next to Becket and Dice-K. A one-two punch of Becket and Santana in the playoffs for the next 5 seasons? Go ahead and pencil the Sox in has world series champions as long as those two pitchers stay healthy. Think Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, except in their primes, and for five years. I am amazed at how the Sox failed to pull the trigger, especially with the Yankees being so close to getting Santana.
So I don’t blame Bill Smith for not taking those offers. He probably had similar logic to my own, and waited. We were wrong.
With that being said, Santana is now in the National League. Whatever we may of lost in prospects, we gained by not having to face him, and not having him go to a contender of ours. That is a bonus in and of itself.
But it wasn’t as if the Twins got nothing in return. The four prospects they got are talented and who knows about them. So far, that Gomez kid looks incredibly exciting. He has the potential to be a solid contributor. And they got three pitchers, one of who is 19 I believe. I think much of the Twins’ success in producing quality pitchers goes beyond the fact they draft well. That is part of it. But over the past few years, the amount of good pitchers they have produced, has to be in part to the way they develop and train them. I think having those pitchers, especially the 19 year old kid, in our system for the next few years, gives them a better shot of becoming quality pitchers than if they were to develop somewhere else.
Well, the blog is probably long enough. I forgot I had so much to say on the Santana deal. Check in later for part two of the Twins blog.