Buzz: Red Sox still Favorites for Santana
In today’s New York Post, Joel Sherman writes that the Red 
Sox remain the ‘strong favorite’ to acquire Johan Santana from the Twins.
According to Sherman, a) the Yankees are still unwilling to trade Phil Hughes and are reluctant to give Santana a six-year contract extension, while b) the Mets lag because Minnesota still wants to get back one or two players who can instantly contribute at the major-league level.
Therefore, Sherman concludes…
“For the Mets to land Santana, they would probably need these stars to align: a) The Twins feel they must deal their ace before spring training and, thus, take the best package available some time in the next six weeks; b) The Mets assemble a package that severely depletes their system, the Twins decide to accept volume as the key to the deal and neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees alter their offers.”
…again, as i have been saying, it’s all about hughes…if the Yankees will trade him, they’ll be able to acquire santana…now, whether they’ll pay him remains to be seen…on the other hand, if the Red Sox stay pat in their offer, the Mets are going to need to over do it, such as Carlos Gomez, maybe Fernando Martinez, and a variety of pitchers, which could include Aaron Heilman…this is why the Mets keep telling people they are ‘monitoring the situation,’ because there is nothing they can really do right now, short of including Jose Reyes, which is not an option…otherwise, Omar Minaya has no choice but to wait and see how the Yankees intend to behave…once that is decided, or the Twins get antsy, whichever happens first, it’s going to come down to whether the Twins want less players, who are more immediate (from Boston), or a lot of players (from the Mets) with high upsides who need more time to develop…
