January 2008 Archives

Johan Santana is asking for 6 years and $150 million, which is apparently a ways away from what the Mets had in mind. The deadline for a deal is 4pm on Friday, so that gives them less than 24 hours to reach an agreement. It seems unlikely that they wouldn't agree by then.

There's a ton of talk in the baseball community online regarding the Santana trade. Today has actually been one of the top 5 traffic days for this site's history. I thought I'd pull together quotes from around the web to get a feel for people's reactions. Twins fans are pretty much on the same page with this one...it stinks.

Update: Fortunately I was able to fix comments and any comments left while they weren't working are now displaying. Thanks!

Before I say anything, I just want to make it clear that the deal is still tentative. The Mets and Johan Santana will need to agree on a fat contract extension before Johan will waive his no-trade clause. It's pretty unlikely that they won't reach a deal, but we can still hope.

USA Today is reporting that a deal is in place to trade Johan Santana to the Mets for Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra.

The Twins on Friday made the decision to bank their future largely on Justin Morneau, who was given a franchise record 6-year $80 million deal. Half the the contract will cover his remaining arbitration years, and the rest will span what would have been his first 3 years of free-agency. He will make $7.4 and $10.6 million, respectively over the next two years and in 2010 when the Twins enter their new downtown stadium, he will level off at $14 million per season for the remaining 4 years of the deal.

Late last week the Twins completed deals with 3 of the 5 arbitration eligible players. Jason Kubel received a 1-year $1.3 million deal, Juan Rincon got a 1-year $2.475 million deal and Justin Morneau got a deal that will pay him $7.4 million dollars.

John Walsh posted analysis of the best outfield arms of 2007 over at The Hardball Times. The entire piece is worth the read, but I just wanted to point out the Twins that appeared on the lists.

Spring training is still six weeks away, but Noah Pransky, sports reporter for ABC7 in Ft Myers, found a few Twins working out at the spring training facility in Ft. Myers.

This is part 1 of a series of pieces over the next couple weeks that will take a position-by-position look at the Twins over the past five seasons. You'll see how the team has changed, where they went right and where they went wrong in personnel decisions.