He won 15 games with no run support last year. He ended up with a 3.33 ERA, pretty comparable to Beckett's 3.27. The difference, is that Boston scored close to 900 runs last year while Minnesota scored just over 700. So they trade away their best pitcher, practically begging the opposition to score more, in exchange for 4 guys that won't be on the opening day roster, and probably won't be on it next year either. It would have been more admirable for them to just say "I quit". Instead they're playing charades with the fans.
To some extent, I have to agree with Chip. If you look at his last 14 starts from last year his numbers took a bit of a dive. Over that stretch his ERA was 4.4 with only 6 quality starts in 14 games. Not at all bad numbers, but not what you would expect from him. I still think he's a fantastic pitcher--arguably the best in the game (you could make a case for Peavy)--but I wouldn't be surprised to see him slip a notch. Further, if anyone knows him, it's the Twins. Everyone wonders why they didn't wait till the trade deadline to pawn him off to someone in a desparate situation. Maybe they expect him to be a little less productive, thus decreasing his value.
He told them he wouldn't waive his no-trade clause in midseason. They should have traded him last month during the winter meetings. The Yanks and Red Sox would have almost assuredly gotten into a bidding war if the Twins led them to beleive that he was going to one or the other.
I'm licking my chops for my first pick in the 4th annual TF Fantasy Baseball League. Tirk knows what I mean.
these arguments aggravate me to no end. proclaiming the most dominant player at his position may likely slip a little is not much of a prediction. also, if thats an off-year for santana then its still better than 99% of the league. I will also predict Tom Brady will not throw more than 50 tds next year and deduce tim duncan isnt worthy of his salary since his numbers have fallen a bit the last few years. neither argument, even if true, is a valid reason for trading either nor does is make sense in losing santana.
yes I do mr 3 peat. a somewhat lucky sob i might add but you got scoreboard x3. i dont think anyone is.
I wonder if Mr Cards fan here would be ok with St. Louis dumping Pujols for a couple of prospects that odds are will never reach his level of play.
First of all, I never said that Minnesota SHOULD trade him. I have only tried to justify this specific deal (with the assumption that a deal of some sort was going to get done). It is obvious that Minnesota had no interest in paying him upwards of $20 mil in 2 years, nor was there any indication that he would have chosen to stay with the Twins had they made such an offer. They were going to trade him and I feel they made out okay under the circumstances. I like Gomez and Guerra as prospects, but I'm not foolish enough to believe that will prove to be of equal value to Santana (not that it's impossible--look at what they got for A.J. Pierzynski: Fransico Liriano, Joe Nathan, and Boof Bonser--none of which were very highly thought of at the time). I think they made the best deal possible at this time. Maybe they could have gotten more at the winter meetings (we don't know and probably never will. I personally don't believe NY was ever going to give up Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrere, nor do I believe that Boston would have given up any more than they were offering a week ago). If you paid attention to my post, you would realize that I brought up Santana's stuggles (that's struggles relative to Santana's usual performance and not to the league average) in order to demonstrate the point that Minnesota may have felt the need to get the deal done now rather than at the trade deadline, for the simple reason that the trend COULD continue and Santana's stock MIGHT fall. I most certainly would not want the Cards to deal Pujols (even though he's coming off a down year by his standards and there are concerns about his health going into this year). But I also understand that the Cardinals are run in a different way than the Twins.
