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Yankees deserve assist in Mets' Santana deal

Ken Davidoff

January 30, 2008

In this crazy world of New York baseball, it just might turn out that, when the Mets complete their miraculous acquisition of Johan Santana, they should thank the Steinbrenner boys most of all.

Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, George's sons - who, a year ago at this time, had virtually nothing to do with Major League Baseball - unwittingly engineered a bait-and-switch that concluded with one of the most glorious moments in the Mets' history.

Hank, with his boisterous talk and his tossing of money at Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez, convinced Twins general manager Bill Smith that he had a dupe on his hands. That the longer he dangled Santana, the more Hank would salivate like Wimpy in front of a hamburger.

Hal, the quiet, younger sibling - with an assist from Yankees general manager Brian Cashman - ensured that moment of desperation would never come.

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It turned into a remarkable misreading by Smith of his potential trading partners. This isn't to say that, five years from now, we won't be praising Smith for his vision in taking Carlos Gomez, Deolis Guerra, Phil Humber and Kevin Mulvey. But you won't find a non-Twins executive in the industry who would choose that package over one fronted by the Yankees' Phil Hughes, Boston's Jon Lester or Lester's teammate Jacoby Ellsbury.

Smith's patience and high demands worked as a strategy only if he were willing to take Santana into spring training with him. After all, the Twins, with Santana aboard, could have made a bona fide run at the World Series. The A's Billy Beane has shown there's no shame in carrying a player through his walk year - be it Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada or Barry Zito - and then picking up compensatory draft picks for him as he departs.

Yet that turned out not to be a real option for the Twins. According to a person briefed on the Twins' thinking, manager Ron Gardenhire believed that Torii Hunter's impending free agency served as a yearlong distraction in 2007, and he didn't want to go through that again with Santana.

Granted, Santana would have attracted far more media scrutiny than did Hunter. But come on, now. Suck it up and work through such lightweight stuff. The Mets, Yankees and Red Sox deal with high-profile players in their walk year pretty much every year, and they seem to do all right.

So to the trade offers Smith went, and he let the Yankees' package of Hughes and Melky Cabrera go by, asking for Ian Kennedy, as well. The Yankees, already skittish about including just Hughes, passed, and they eventually took Hughes off the table altogether. The Red Sox's interest never seemed to surpass an interest in making sure the Yankees didn't get Santana at a bargain rate.

Remember how the Yankees folded on their "We won't sign A-Rod if he opts out" pledge? The Twins did - too much, it seems. They equated that situation with the Santana trade discussions.

But it was apples and oranges. The A-Rod threat served as mere rhetoric. Ultimately, the Yankees still believed their best move for third base was to re-sign A-Rod, and once A-Rod renounced Scott Boras, it all came together. This time, however, Cashman believed that the better baseball maneuver was to keep Hughes. Hal Steinbrenner believed that the team's payroll was high enough, as it was.

And Hank Steinbrenner, impetuous as he may seem, served as no match against that duo.

Enter the Mets, who, to their credit, hung in there when the Twins kept asking for first Jose Reyes and then Fernando Martinez. Who refused to give up and sign a Kyle Lohse or Livan Hernandez until Santana's fate was settled.

Who have now successfully changed the conversation about them, after The Collapse hovered for almost four months.

Great work by the Mets, yet they couldn't have done it without some help from the Yankees, and some incompetence by the Twins.

They say it takes a village. Consider the Triborough Bridge the midpoint of baseball's oddest village.