Heights of Dumbassery
Recently, several people have asked TBL why she has not blogged on the Santana trade. The answer is simple: TBL tries to keep a 97% profanity-free blog, and until now she has been unable to uphold that standard on this subject. In fact, she has already backspaced over two f-bombs and one h-e-double-hockey-sticks, and this post has barely begun!
By now you, the uniformly astute readers of these pages, have no doubt formed a fairly good idea of the author's opinion on the subject.
TBL is not amused.
We all, of course, recognized--while maintaining irrational hope to the contrary--that a shining star like Johan Santana would not spend his entire career here in Flyover Country, where men are men, sheep are nervous, and pennies are compressed into copper wire inside the white-knuckled grasp of baseball owners.
So TBL cannot claim any real surprise or even dismay over the fact that he was traded. No, all the swearing and rending of garments and flinging of crockery stem from the specifics of the transaction, to wit:
They traded Señor En Fuego, two-time Cy Young Award winner, slayer of dragons, vanquisher of tyrants, savior of distressed maidens, heir of Elendil, Johan "Sit Down, Bitch" Santana for...
...prospects.
PROSPECTS?!
Prospects plus an experienced center fielder or starting pitcher, TBL could have lived with. Even prospects plus a mighty fine relief pitcher. But it just ain't right to trade such a dazzling known quantity for nothing but a handful of question marks, however highly rated.
Imagine, if you will, that fellow Cy Young winner CC Sabathia lost the excess weight and the lousy 'tude, and we went out and got him in exchange for Joe Benson, Wilson Ramos, Tyler Robertson and Anthony Swarzak (currently listed by Baseball America as our #2, 3, 4 and 5 prospects, respectively). How would you feel about that? TBL would, while sincerely acknowledging the potential of said prospects, spend about a month chortling over the dumbassery of the other GM.
Which is, of course, precisely what Mets fans are doing.
So, unless and until one or more of our latest acquisitions becomes a new Twins superstar, TBL must christen GM Bill Smith as "Brian Sabean, the Second".
2 rejoinders:
The problem is that Bill Smith did not have any good options. As far as those of us on the outside can tell, there was only 1 offer on the table. (And he would have been rightfully excoriated for taking any of the offers that we think were available during the winter meetings.) So the choice was between taking this and keeping an unhappy Santana for one more year and getting draft picks. Personally, I would have taken the latter course of action and made him throw at least 250 innings. Then again that would have done no one any good except to show that the Twins would rather destroy a player than not get a reasonable deal.
There was a third option, too--wait until July and see how much a near-contender would cough up before the deadline.
Go On, Spit It Out