Twins Wanted Wang/Kennedy For Santana?

Wow, it must be pretty infuriating for Twins fans to see how they were poised to reap huge packages from teams, that at the time, they considered not good enoungh. Only to wake up and find that all they could get was crap from the Mets, and hear that their organization had to whine and cry to try to get any sort of deal.

It almost would have been more respectable to just keep Johan.

*Sorry, I meant to say the Twins deserved to get nothing for him*

That makes more sense. Wang + Kennedy is believable for the Yankees to have hung up the phone for.

Kennedy + Cabrera + ok prospects is not believable.

I love Kennedy, but c'mon, that nugget of info really did not make sense.

Though now, I think the Yankees are crossing their fingers CC walks and are going to try and nab CC and Teixiera. They are going to have mega bucks coming off the books and mega (even more) from the new stadium.

Yikes.

Most models show that Santana is going to earn nearly all of the $125MM-$150MM he's assumed to receive. I'm sure if I'm a GM I'd be terrified giving a pitcher that kind of deal, but experts seem to think he's a fairly safe bet.

He might have been able to get a deal like that at the trading deadline if one team was desperate but he obviously wouldn't get anything now. It's too bad he wasn't smart or tough enough to call Santana's bluff and hold onto him now and try to trade him in July.

Smith was ridiculous in this negotiation. It seems as though he had a copy of Baseball America tucked under his arm and all he wanted was to pull in some players off of the top of some team's top 10 prospects list, rather than get the best players he could get for his team. He could have left Hughes, Joba and Kennedy out of it altogether and still gotten far more from the Yankees than he got from the Mets, in any combination of Tabata/Jackson, Melky, Horne, Marquez, Gardner, Ohlendorf, Brackman or a flier on Sanchez. Almost all of those are better prospects than any of the pitchers that he got from the Mets. Take any four of them and its a nice deal, and Yankee fans would have accepted it because theyre not attached to those players like they are the big 3. The same holds true for the Red Sox.
Smith should lose his job if any of these reports are true.

Bill Smith is the idiot of the year. I guarantee half of my friends could do just as good a job as Bill did with this one. And this being his first month on the job crap is not an excuse, we all have jobs, we do them and if we don't we get fired. These people live in a different world. If I made a comparable mistake at my job, my boss would laugh me out of the office the next time I tried to sit at my desk.

hey hmmmmm,

good call except not, I'm glad cashman didn't bend over for smith after he laid out the red carpet for the mets. After the Mets sign Santana and set the bar for top pitching at a level only the Sox and Yanks can reach, we'll end up getting Sabathia next year and be all the better for it, without having to break down our farm system one bit. So yeah, I'm furious lol.

Remember the Yankee's have a vested interest in making themselves look good in this situation. They have not made any big moves in this offseason in order to make themselves better than Boston. The Yankee fans are going to look back at this situation and wonder why Hank did not get Johan when Boston wins the East and also not get a wild card spot. If you look at the Yankee's objectively, they are not good enough to make even a wild card spot. So in short, no postseason for the Yankee's for the 2nd straight year equals one ticked off fan base. Better have a scapegoat ready....Bill Smith.

hmmm

I understand your point but I wouldn't go as far as to say they are "good" enough to make the postseason. They are still in the top 3, odds-wise in Vegas, to win the Series. I'm not going to go into runs scored and revamped pitching with hughes and chamberlain who scouts still think was wasting away in the bullpen last year and his real stuff will be able to be shown as a starter. Pettite and Wang CAN be 20 game winners. And I don't understand your 2nd postseason comment, I think they played Cleveland last year in the post season, but I could be wrong. And whats not to believe about the story? That the Twins asked for Kennedy and Wang or that the yankees declined? Given the track record of Smith, I think its completely accurate, its been cited by many baseball insiders.

I heard Sen. McCain has an illegitmate black baby.