The Johan Santana sweepstakes are finally over (pending an agreement on a contract extension), and the winner is... a tie between the New York Mets and the New York Yankees. The loser...The Minnesota Twins.

For the longest time, everyone said that the Twins had the upper hand in trade talks. Yet unlike all of those people, I never understood that. Santana has a no-trade clause, is demanding a ton of money, and the biggest obstacle of all, he's a free agent in a year. Therefore, why should a team give up their top prospects and a ton of cash when they could just give up the cash in a year? Well apparently the Twins were taking the stance that if they didn't receive the prospects they were looking for, then they would be content playing the season with Santana as the ace. Obviously that was a bluff as we can now see, and both the Red Sox and Yankees called them on it. So what happened to the Twins? Well, they were left taking the best package available on the table, and it's a far inferior one to the choices they had. 

Frankly, if I were new Twins GM Bill Smith, I would've played the year with Santana, and then taken the two compensation draft picks when he left as a free agent. The package of Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey, Carlos Gomez, and Deolis Guerra is almost an insult compared to what he could've gotten two months ago. Had Smith traded Santana to either the Red Sox or the Yankees, people would have applauded him for a job well done leveraging one super power against the other. But now? Well, don't look for an applause.

As for Santana, this was the best possible outcome for him from a statistical point of view. Again, unlike many other people, I feel that Santana's career is trending downward. The life expectancy of an "ace" is about 5-7 years, not the 10 that many believe. Santana has already been an "ace" now for four years, therefore he only has another 1-3 years left at the top of his game unless he's an anomaly like Greg Maddux, or a freak (and I mean that in a good way) like Randy Johnson which I don't think he's either. So by moving to the National League, Santana can extend his dominance for a longer stretch, and in turn enhance his legacy.

Now why are the Yankees winners? Because they didn't have to give up Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera and then sign Santana to a ludicrous contract, and more importantly, because the Red Sox didn't get him either. While I believe Santana is on the decline, he's still a very good pitcher. And had he joined a rotation of Josh Beckett and Dice-K for the next three years, well that could have been devastating for not only the Yankees, but the rest of baseball.

This all is eerily similar to 1998 when another great left-hander, Randy Johnson, was on the block. There were talks of the Yankees going hard after him, but really they were trying to drive up the price for the Indians fearing they would face them in the postseason. The Mariners ended up dealing Johnson out of the American League to the Houston Astros for a package of prospects, and the Yankees went on to win the World Series that year as well as each of the next two. I'm not saying the Yanks will win it all this year, but their chances certainly got better with this deal.

The hot stove is heating up again my friends! Gotta love it!