If I had waited a day

So it only needed one more click of the refresh button - Johan Santana appears to be on his way out of the AL, with the Mets winning an elongated battle for his services.

Considering the initial reports were that the Mets had no chance unless they included Jose Reyes, it seems that the Mets have gotten Santana for a steal - four prospects headed by Carlos Gomez and Deolis Guerra - all of whom feature highly on John Sickels' listing of the Mets prospects, but none of whom fall into the surefire 'A' rating.

On the surface this seems like an insane trade by the Twins - in order (if the Twins had actually been committed to the asylum and made me GM instead of Bill Smith) I would have taken the Yankees package headed by Phil Hughes, the Red Sox package headed by Ellsbury, the Red Sox package headed by Jon Lester, then the Mets package - but then we don't really know if any of these packages were ever truly on the table, and we certainly don't know whether any of them were on the table today.

But as a Twins fan, I would have to be thinking - this is all you could get for the best pitcher in baseball - really?

From this Sox fans perspective, this really is the best of all worlds - Santana is no longer in the AL, he is most definitely not heading to the Bronx - but he does get to pitch in NY (so I will get more chances to watch him), and the NY media will tweak the Yankees every time Santana has a great game and Phil Hughes has a stinker (not that I actually expect that to happen too often - the stinker part anyway).

And equally, while I am sure that the Mets are very happy to have Santana in their rotation - the Mets rotation before this trade was a heck of a lot of question marks, now it is one true ace and a lot of question marks. I am sure I am under-rating Pedro, Perez, Maine and Hernandez, but if Santana does push the Mets into the World Series, I am not sure that I worry facing that rotation (again, not to under-estimate the impact Santana has, clearly I fear the rotation more than I did yesterday).