Santana: the real deal

When Johan Santana was finally traded to the Mets earlier this month, a friend of mine from Virginia called me up to offer his condolences that the Red Sox once again couldn't land "their guy" during the winter. Honestly, I was about as heartbroken by Santana joining the Mets as Pacman Jones was when he didn't win Time's "Man of the Year," but I played along and lamented the Sox failure in that sad, kind-of phony way all Boston fans learned how to do when they were born.

In reality, a Santana deal had three possible outcomes: Shift the balance of power to the Yankees in the A.L., make the Red Sox rotation the baseball equivalent of Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men," or make the Mets the best team in the N.L., otherwise known as being the sexiest person at a Star Trek convention. Those were the three big players.

With a year left on his contract, and a nifty no-trade clause to boot, Santana and the stingy Twins knew the day would come. Either hold on for this season and hope the baseball gods finally smile upon the Metrodome, or do the smart thing and unload the two-time Cy Young winner for a handful of elite prospects because they weren't going to dish out a contract so pricy it would make both Kevin Brown and Barry Zito wet themselves. In typical Twins savvy, they held onto their cards for too long, assuming either the Sox or the Yankees would blink and trade away their farm systems to ink Santana. One-upping themselves in stupidity, they even traded one of their best pitching prospects (Matt Garza) to the Rays for local crazy person Delmon Young, because they were so confident they'd be landing either Phil Hughes or Jon Lester from the northeast.

TWINKIES DOWN SIZED, METS UPGRADE It took a few months, but someone lightly jabbed the Twins with a stick and explained that neither the Sox and Yanks had any real interest in Johan, they were just trying to make sure the other didn't get him. In step the Mets, with a boat-full of mediocre prospects and an open wallet, and you've got yourself the reverse Pedro Martinez Trade: an ace in his prime jumping from the low market A.L. team to the N.L.'s big spender. Put Santana into that ballpark in Queens, against N.L. lineups, in a division where only two teams are set to seriously compete, with a group of guys he shares similar heritage with, and that's a Hall of Fame making move if I've ever seen one. What's best for G.M. Omar Minaya? The Mets did it by giving only their second best pitching prospect and a group of other guy's you wouldn't recognize if they shook your hand and told you their names.

It may have been the worst outcome for the Twins, but it was a great move for Santana. He now carries the load of New York's "Other" franchise, becoming the face of a team universally known as the weird stepchild of Big Apple baseball. But for the National League as a whole, the move changes nothing. Already, there are lines of "experts" raising their hands and doing the "Tack a Question Mark on the End of a Statement So You Can Have a Story" trick. "Does this trade make the N.L. as good as the A.L.?" or "Johan Santana brings glory back to the Senior Circuit?"

JOHAN'S BALANCING ACT The trade balances off the two leagues like the Kevin Garnett-Celtics deal balanced the NBA. One team in a gawd-awful league will be substantially better, while the rest of the jokes they compete against flop around like Ted Kennedy's jowls. Santana will clobber National League lineups, which still almost exclusively go only five or six talented players deep, the same way Jake Peavy or Carlos Zambrano do, except he'll do it better because of his A.L. pedigree. Which is to say, he knows how to hit the strike zone when he needs to, and is capable of fooling hitters by making them guess wrong with his video-game-like changeup. He'll be, to quote Steven A. Smith, "DOMINANT." But with or without Johan, the N.L. has a long way to go and a lot of learning to do before they can hang with the league with the D.H.

It's not that I'm a snobby American League guy who can't appreciate the beauty of National League play, I can! I'm just snobby for other reasons! Like the fact that our 5-9 hitters are capable of hitting over .250 on any given year and our back of the rotation guys are still better pure pitchers than most number two guys in the N.L. Case in point, Ted Lilly: an average pitcher with below average talent that never went more than two games over .500 in the A.L. and never had a full season where he finished with an ERA below four. One year in the N.L., and he's seven games over .500 with a sparkling 3.83 ERA. It's like the fountain of youth, but instead of drinking water, you get a veritable pitching break every time you get by the first four batters in the lineup. There's not enough Johan Santana's in the world to mend the offensively impotent N.L., and especially the N.L. Central where Albert Pujols could probably start his own team featuring just him, and he'd have a shot at winning the division.

So congratulations to the Mets for landing their guy, embarrassing the fiscally dopey Twins and keeping the Yankees from taking the A.L. East from us.

As for the rest of the N.L., call me when you figure out that having the double switch doesn't make up for the fact that you've made Kaz Matsui, Mike Hampton and Jeff Suppan millionaires.