Mets Did NOT Win Santana Trade

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• Bob L February 5, 2012 at 10:30 am

  i was against the Santana trade for 2 reasons: 1) the players–there i was wrong. But 2nd, on the # of years in the contract…forget the freaking money. It’ll soon be a baseball commandment that Thou shall be very very careful and selective in signing pitchers to long-term deals.
  It’s very close to the now well-known commandment: Thou shall not trade a 20-year old Southpaw.
  • t agee February 5, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    For me the only risk in that deal was the players given up. Humber, Deolis, Mulvey and Gomez, the money/years weren’t as significant because the true ACE is the hardest part of the team to acquire and i do recall reading that it was either Fred or Jeff that negotiated the terms of the extension.

    The prospects given up gave Minnesota 3 chances to get a great pitcher or 3 chances to get 3 average pitchers or anyway you want to look at it plus at the very least a back up or platooned CFer and it kept Johan out of the AL.

    The one and only thing that we actually have been successful with from a front office standpoint is the salary dump deal. obviously those are among the easiest things for a GM to do since they first and foremost have to do with the finances of the owner and to a much lesser extent the actual horse trading although you do have to beat the value of the two draft picks, less the signing bonuses they would command.

    Humber, Mulvey, Deolis and Gomez represented the risk but the 600 IP with a sub 3.00 ERA is something we just weren’t going to be able to produce for ourselves and a pitching staff of Pedro, Pelfrey, Maine, Perez and Figgy wasn’t going to give us a chance going forward.

    Sometime’s it is the right time to strike and usually it’s best to have the pieces in the farm to go out be able to talk to anyone about any player rather than constricting your focus to just those that are type A free agents.

    imagine if we had gotten Zito the year before? No way we get 600 IP with a sub 3.00 ERA over 3 years. What will we get going forward? hard to say, I’m not expecting anything more than 150 IP and a 4.50 ERA but that’s the risk you take when you don’t develop your own ace’s.

    It was still a worthwhile and credible attempt at providing a vital piece that has eluded us since the the early 80′s.
• XtreemIcon February 5, 2012 at 10:33 am

  Omar most certainly did not misread the market. Not even a little bit. Johan would not have taken much less in an extension, and as you said, no extension, no trade. John, there’s a distinct lack of foresight in your piece when it comes to the open market. The Yanks and Red Sox balked at the trade becaue of the pieces, but do you think for one second, if a trade never happened and Johan left the Twins two picks in his wake, that either of those teams wouldn’t have offered $140 mil or even $150 mil to Johan the FA? The extension was fine, and probably less than what Johan would have received from the two AL East teams and maybe even a surprise from Anaheim, or some dark horse team. The title of your piece should have been “Omar Fleeced Baseball”
  • K Maxx February 5, 2012 at 10:51 am

    I dont agree with you most of the time, but we’re on the same page here. And if Santana did go on the open market he would have gotten Sabathia money at least which I believe was $160MM.
    • XtreemIcon February 5, 2012 at 10:57 am

      I’d make that trade and sign that extension every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
• Bob L February 5, 2012 at 10:53 am

  Saying the Santana trade was a ‘steal’ for us based on Johan’s 40 – 15 / 600IP / 2.87ERA is like admiring how good-looking we were when we were young/slim and muscular, and ignoring definitive evidence of that growing gut or bald patch.
  In this case, the guy just had major shoulder surgery which (as i’ve read) is a very problematic situation for any pitcher to successfully comeback from–and to date, Johan was shutdown last season when he attempted to again take the mound.
  Hey, i’m a Mets fan. Damn, i hope he wins big time over the next 3 years, but, given the injury, the odds are long that he will be even close to the ‘same’ Santana of years past.
  It bums me to say that. i hope i’m wrong.
  • Joe D February 5, 2012 at 11:43 am

    I didn’t say it was a steal based on those numbers. Here is what I wrote:

    “Santana was also a STEAL compared to the Barry Zito and Mike Hampton deals, lets not forget that while we’re at it.”

    Look at the Zito and Hampton contracts and the terrible numbers they put up.
    • Bob L February 5, 2012 at 12:37 pm

      Okay Joe, i wasn’t specifically referring to your use of ‘steal’ in your comment. Just contrasting my view on this with those of many Mets fans who if they ‘don’t’ use that word, surely connote it otherwise.
      Hey, i hope i’m wrong on both counts. i was wrong about the players to get the Twins to give him up. And i hope Johan has a stellar 2012 and 2013 and continues being effective in his last contract year.
      But, today, at this juncture, the odds of that happening seem a bit ‘long’ to me.
• oldtimer February 5, 2012 at 11:10 am

  Boy, if this deal isn’t a bust what deal is? You probably think the Pedro signing was a good one too!
  • XtreemIcon February 5, 2012 at 11:49 am

    Pedro’s deal was a great one, too. It brought legitimacy (and Carlos Beltran) to the franchise. And he pitched great for a bit, too. Sometimes you have to weight the good against the bad. I don’t think anyone actually thought he’d finish his contract, but you had to weigh that against what he did bring, which went beyond the pitcher’s mound.
    • Metsie February 5, 2012 at 12:17 pm

      Did you drink my coffee today or something?
      • Satish Ram February 5, 2012 at 2:21 pm

        Lmao.

        Metsie, for the most part, Xtreem thinks rather rationally, I’d say. I tend to agree with a lot of what he says. But as I’ve told him before, we just look at things analytically a little different.

        On the topic of this post…
        I completely disagree.

        We definitely won. Whether Santana’s contract was on the books this season or not, we wouldn’t be spending. The contract may be way more than I would hope to pay for a pitcher, even of his caliber (the years as well) but the market dictated this to be the price. If we didn’t give him this extension, there was no trade. And if we didn’t trade for him, he was getting the deal from someone else. Santana was an ace-caliber pitcher at the time of the trade and he definitely has given us some value – PLUS there’s still time left in the contract to judge.

        Add in the fact that none of the players we traded over there have come even close to being significant contributors at the MLB level – and I’d do this trade again.
        • Bob L February 5, 2012 at 4:04 pm

          Politely disagree. Saying ‘the contract $$$$$’s were what ‘the market dictated’ and if we didn’t agree, there would’ve been no deal is beside the point. The real question is: Should the Santana ‘trade and sign’ been made at the time? Granted he was the best SP in baseball at the time, BUT the contract was a long one, 7 years; he would pitch the majority of his Mets years in his 30s..33/34/35 in the last 3 years. He’s a power pitcher with a slender build. i would not have committed those $$$$’s for that long, market-dictate or no market dictate. The vaunted ‘market’ is nothing more than the consensus and or conventional wisdom…and is often wrong…and oh at what a price to be wrong.
          Look at the #s: 3 very good years; one lost year; and he enters the last 3 years of the deal, undergoing shoulder rehab, and will pitch this season ( i hope) at 33.
          To me, at the end of the day, this looks like it will be a bad deal. i wouldn’t have done it. i hope i’m wrong.
          • Metsie February 5, 2012 at 5:24 pm

            Who is your ACE if you do NOT make that deal?
            Pelfrey?

            Santana was the right move!
            160 Mil would have been a good salary to add one more like him to the rotation!

            Look at what another mere 10-50 game winner in our rotation would have done for 07, 08 and 10!
            Who wins the division those years if you do that?

            Would we have Attendance and financial issues now?

            HELL NO!
            Bottomline is sometimes penny wise is pound foolish!
            And we are going to see that this time next year when Sandy has to step in front of a mike to say we lost 70 Mil AGAIN despite cutting 50 Mil in salary because those cuts cut into the bottomline ATTENDANCE!
            • Metsie February 5, 2012 at 5:25 pm

              er that should read mere 10-15 game winner…an Ace would be closer to 20 Wins!
              Think about that when you look at my post!
        • Metsie February 5, 2012 at 5:17 pm

          Well I agree that the Santana deal was a good one for us. Even WITH the injury!
          What this team sorely lacked in 2006 and beyond was the 1 2 punch at the top of the rotation that could stall those consecutive losses and the only real mistake after Santana was not getting him the proper complement.
          I wonder what 2010 (and you could add 07 and 08 to that scenario) might have looked like if we had Lee, not that we had a shot at him but WHAT IF we had one other ACE type to pitch that year? Would Santana have gotten injured trying to win two games every outing? Would the ending have been the same? Would anyone care Bay was hurt or even mention the missing Beltran?

          Might have done nothing for 2009 but in 2010 we would have had a record close to 94 wins and a division title with another 15 game winner on the squad. Well over 100 wins in 2008 and 2007 if we had that.

          I believe the mistake wasn’t that we spent too much it was that we stopped short before the buying was done! And when we did buy we bought the wrong thing!

          The thing about buying yourself to the championship is you do have to keep going until you get there. And while your doing that you can be able to build up the Minors so it can replace those players once their contracts run out!

          If you look at what Omar did you see the way the timing would have been.
          Santana is set to expire about a year after Harvey and Familia are expected to have a year under their belt.

          If we want to blame Omar for anything we should blame him for working his BUY while rebuild to coincide with HIS contract which was not guaranteed and was canceled just before his plan was due to blossom!
          It’s no coincidence that Beltran was due to expire right around the same time Davis and Duda were expected to come up! Not a big coincidence that We have all these 2Bs and SSs in the MiL waiting for a place to play and if not for Murphy’s bat and some injuries would be our 2B this year! Murphy himself being a 1st and 3rd baseman makes the cheap replacement for Wright should he go elsewhere! Pagan was always destined to replace Beltran in Center.

          The timing for all of this is uncanny but only if you don’t give Omar credit for thinking that long term.
          Which is what a lot of people think or choose to think because they want to think he was just awful due to some Philosophy they want to see implemented here!

          He wasn’t a bad GM and he wasn’t a Boy Wonder either!
          Not many GMs in baseball are! There is no comparable to Bill Belichik who manages to win no matter what kind of crap he has to work with.
          The only GM who is close to that is Cashman and he buys more than anyone which is why he doesn’t have problems not rushing and stockpiling MiL replacements because he doesn’t need many replacements from there and when he has them ready to go thats when he decides not to spend more money than he has to!

          That said I just thought it was odd that X made the same arguments I have made in the past when he was on the other side of those arguments…so it struck me as a bit funny!
    • NJstuckinTX February 5, 2012 at 2:35 pm

      The Pedro deal was horrible. I was not a fan of it at all. Too many years, in my mind. It did help bring in Beltran, but I think he would have come regardless. The money was too good.

      As for Santana, I thought it was a great deal. A little longer than I would have liked to have seen, but Santana’s numbers prior to trade/signing were stellar and he gave the team some solid seasons. And the only prospect I wanted to stay was Gomez, but between Gomez ans Santana, you take Santana ever day of the week and twice on Sundays.
• 86mets February 5, 2012 at 12:55 pm

  Here’s a question: if you’re the 1979 Houston Astros who want to lure Nolan Ryan away form the Angels would you be worried about the accumulated innings on Ryan’s right arm? Frnom 1972 to 1979 Ryan “AVERAGED” 273 Innings pitched per season, with two seasons in excess of 326 and another of 299. Were the Astros disappointed in the contract they gave Ryan to go 106-94, 3.13? He didn’t put up the IP, CG, or shutouts that he had in California, but then, the NL didn’t have the DH or need to pinch hit for the starter that he had in Houston.

  My point is, high innings pitched totals shouldn’t necessarily be such a big deal, especially when Santana was still just entering his prime years at the time the contract was signed. You just simply cannot accurately say that this guy or that guy will surely get hurt based upon the number of innings they have pitched over a period of years.

  I, for one, do not regret the Santana deal. Sometimes you have to take risks in order to get what you want or where you want to go. The Mets viewed Santana as a shut down #1 starting pitcher, which he was, and a key component of what they hoped would be a long run of playoff appearances. That that has not happened is far more due to other circumstances on and off the field with the Mets than Santana’s injuries. Although they certainly contributed. But no one has a crystal ball that will tell them that this is the exact scenario that was going to play out. It was a risk worth taking, even though it didn’t pan out as hoped. And how many of us would have been digging on Omar had the Yankees ended up him and he helped them win a World Series or two along with a Cy Young award or two?
• mic February 5, 2012 at 1:20 pm

  The Mets ‘won’….AND I am happy about the length of the contract.

  - It is not my belief you can really grade a trade. What if Matt Peterson had remained a Met and had a breakout season. what If Fmart was in this trade and not C.Gomez…(with gomez now the CF and leadoff hitter), What if deolis was a Met and now ready to be a star.

  - Santana, when he pitches …at 75% can[pretty much deliver a game. His breakdown was predicted. But given age I think he can comeback AND if he can give 75% will be better by far than anyone else we throw out there.
  - For all I hear about Brandon Webb, there is a converse in Frank Liriano. Guys do comeback. Not always. But I for one I hope Zohan does. As for 7yrs…Carlos was washed up and had knives in him but in his first full yr back gave all star numbers and returned a bluechipper in trade.

  So lets just wait a little on this one.
• Met Maniac February 5, 2012 at 2:56 pm

  Back to the drawing board John. You are way off!
• jdon February 5, 2012 at 10:38 pm

  It really remains to be seen. One year has been fluched down the tube, but if he can come back and perform adequately, then I think the deal is not so bad. Question is: can he do that?
• stick February 5, 2012 at 10:56 pm

  The contract would not be a big issue if his injury hadn’t coincided with the finances (and payroll) going into the dumper. having that big a % of the budget locked up for nothing is a major hardship.

  My take at the time was that the deal was a big risk (since he had some previous arm issues), but that the team really needed to take it. So even if it doesn’t end up really working out, hard to criticize them for rolling the dice.
• jessep February 6, 2012 at 9:41 am

  I think in the situation the Mets were in, I’d want them to make that exact same trade/sign every time.

  Did it work out? No. But they needed a legitimate #1 starter, and they were on the brink of something special that just didn’t pan out.
• Donal February 6, 2012 at 8:54 am

  John, I have to disagree with you here. Even with the contract considered, the Mets got a good deal.

  all of those contracts are about paying for 3 or 4 years over the course of 6 or 7. And for those first few years, Santana was an absolute beast. He was a legit ace brought here to put the team over the top for October. It’s not his fault there were so many deficiancies in other places.
• Ponies, squirrels, and alternate timelines, oh my « Paul's Random Baseball Stuff February 11, 2012 at 8:01 am

  [...] Omar Minaya didn’t trade for Johan Santana prior to the 2008 season. For all the recent talk about whether the Mets “won” the Santana trade, Flood’s alternate history [...]