A lot of big deals going down in baseball the last few days, eh? Well, okay, the Braves made some nice moves and the Red Sox made a big one, but some of these trades were just so freaking “meh”. Matt Morris to the Pirates? That’s about as exciting and relevant as Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton swapping a tampon. The Yankees got Wilson Betemit to play first and back up A-Rod? Well, that team certainly needed more “pop” in the lineup and less middle relief anyway.
Which is why the biggest deadline day hangover news might actually be the fiery words coming out of Minnesota Twins’ starter Johan Santana’s mouth. Santana has basically called the Twins on the proverbial carpet, complaining quite spicily about the passive manner in which the team approached the trading deadline (most experts had them shift from buyers to sellers a few weeks ago, whatever the eff that’s worth):
You always talk about future, future. … But if you only worry about the future, then I guess a lot of us won’t be part of it…Why waste time when you’re talking about something that’s always going to be like that? It’s never going to be beyond this point,” Santana told the newspaper. It doesn’t make any sense for me to be here, you know?
In case you didn’t know, Santana is going to be a free agent after next year and since he’s by far and away the best pitcher in baseball, he’s going to get a shitload of money. Since the Twins are notably cheap, its been assumed that one Mr. Steinbrenner would step in with a boatload of cash and bring the two time Cy Young winner to New York. Which would be horrible for the sport of baseball. Why? Because the Yankees would immediately win the World Series. Okay, maybe not but close, since Johan is about as sure a thing as you can get in this crazy world.
Know what though? We’re sick and tired of this “George is going to buy whatever he wants” bunch of bull-ka-ka. Screw him, Johan. Just for once, we want to see a good pitcher (not counting you Senor Zito) bypass the spoils of the Yankees and go sign somewhere interesting. Sure, San Fran can’t pull this off because they pulled a Cialis-special and blew their wad on Mr. Monkey (our name for the aforementioned Zito); Minnesota is likely too cheap for a resign; Cleveland is farm oriented and well, Cleveland; St. Louis prefers reclamation projects; Atlanta is likely too cheap and garbage heap oriented as well; the Dodgers have plenty of pitching…
So what are we looking at here? And bearing in mind that a LOT can change in the next year and a half (see Liriano, Francisco). We have the Yankees, the Mets and the Cubs as frontrunners we suppose. But the Mets have a pretty deep pitching staff with lots of lefties and plenty of Hispanic fueled money on the books–we say that not as a racist slur or anything, just pointing out Omar Minaya’s penchant for inking persons of that particular cultural background–and the Cubs just spent a shitload of money last season on Soriano and Ted
