Smith has always said resigning Santana would be his fist choice and Santana has always said he would like to stay in Minnesota. None of the big money teams seem to anxious to throw the big buck long term deal down. Suddenly, 4 years and 80 million dollars doesn’t seem so unrealistic.

I’m wondering if the whole point of all these potential trades was to drive Santana’s price down.

It’s not going to happen. Somebody will flinch. Somebody will throw in something just to get a deal done, then look out.

I’m torn. I would love Santana (who wouldn’t) but am concerned about moving the farm for him. We can’t move BOTH Gomez and FMart, that’s silly. Not that FMart would fill in for an injured Alou this year but he’s a long term replacement. I think we’ll have to sign another OF anyway because if Gomez does go, we’ll need another body aside from Chavez out there. I still like adding Wilkerson for competition. Maybe we try to pull Gomez out of the deal and replace him with Church? I remember reading a while ago the Twins preferred Church to Milledge, which may have been the point of the deal.

FMart, Church, Mulvey, Humber is intriguing

We keep our OF replacement who could blossom this year and sent major league ready talent to the Twins for both the outfield and pitching. Perhaps Gotay sweetens the deal as we have a glut of 2b (but then who subs at SS?, hmmm)

We keep Pelfrey, which I like because we’ll need his arm at least as a fill in sometime during the season and we keep Guerra who is the bright light on the horizon. As noted above to trade Guerra and FMart now, before they’ve really cemented themselves would be foolish because in all likelyhood we’d be selling them under value. Trading one though, is worth the risk for Santana.

We can sign Wilkerson to replace Church keeping Gomez in the wings to come up later this summer, Pelfrey is either in the rotation or an injury call up.

Also, take into account you’re on a competitive team, have to deal with less aggravation, stress and press . . . Minnesota may be the better place to be. It’s not like you’re there in the winter, you can winter the offseason where ever you want and Spring Training is in Florida (or Arizona).

I know that the rush of New York / Boston is higher, but the crash sucks to. I mean the booing some of us Met fans give to OUR players is kinda silly at times, why deal with that?

What do you suppose his value will be then…either to us or to the league. Same for both Mulvey and Pelfrey if either or both are in AAA.

As to Guerra and FMART…they may be the gems of the system but trading them when they have had such little experience and such little impact would be akin to trading Milledge when we did. You can not trade when the value of the player on the market does not match your own value expectation of the player as they progress.

If Guerra starts popping at 96 mph consistently this year and throws strikes as a 19 yr old in high a and then spends some time mowing down guys in AA before the year ends….he value would be threw the roof. The reason he is not there yet with his value is it is unclear if he will get there and he is just 18 last season with no real track record.

Point is this…FMart and Guerra alone add almost no value to the deal. Trading them before they develop more is just plain stupid. At minimum…let em develop if your goal is to move them for pitching. Even the all star break may provide enough time to get their value sufficiently high enough that it could be just Guerra and Fmart for Santana rather than all the other chips as well.

I say hold on to the youngest ones for sure. Over load them with talent elsewhere (Rustich, Kunz, vineyard, Niese, etc)