Hank Steinbrenner is a reporter’s dream. He shoots from the hip. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. He says things other baseball executives don’t say.

Baseball’s tampering rules prohibit officials from publicly discussing other teams’ players. Last night, Hank told the AP, “As much as I want Santana, and you can make that clear — for his sake, to know that I do want him — the fact is that I’m not going to play the game.”

Blatant tampering. Most baseball officials won’t go into specifics about trade discussions. Hank told the New York Times:

“How can I go any higher? What do they want — Hughes, Kennedy and Cabrera? I can’t do that kind of thing. It’s crazy. It’s suicidal. In the past 20 or 30 years, teams have always asked more from the Yankees than they have of anybody else, and that’s going to stop. I’ve made the best offer Minnesota is going to get, and the fact is, it’s an offer we can go away happy and they can go away happy.”

Wow. As a reporter, it doesn’t get any better than that. Our aim is to give the readers as much insight as possible into these trade discussions. Twins GM Bill Smith, like predecessors Terry Ryan and Andy MacPhail, plays these things very close to the vest. That makes our job harder.

But Smith isn’t trying to please the media. He’s trying to do the best job he can for a franchise. Tough to begrudge that.

You have to love this negotiation because it pits Gotham against the Minny-Apple. It’s David vs. Goliath. The Yankees are trying their strong arm tactics, and now we’ll see if the Twins hold their ground.

The Yankees seem to be playing this much like they did with Randy Johnson in December 2004. They were negotiating with the Diamondbacks for weeks and then orchestrated a very public pullout, saying Arizona had unrealistic demands.

The Yankees could do this because where else was Arizona going to trade Johnson? He was 41. He was under contract for one more season (just like Johan) at $16 million, and he was looking for a two-year contract extension. What other team gives away money like that?

Sure enough, Arizona eventually came crawling back to the Yankees, and on Jan. 11, 2005, the Yankees got Johnson for Javier Vazquez, Brad Halsey, Dioneer Navarro and cash. The Yankees signed Johnson to a two-year, $32 million extension.

Again, who else could afford to risk that kind of money? A cool, $48 million for a pitcher who was 44 by the end of that contract. That’s insanity.

This is no different. What other team won’t blink about giving Santana a six-year contract extension worth upwards of $150 million? No matter how good Santana is, few teams want to be on the hook for any pitcher with a seven-year contract. The seven-year, $126 million deal the Giants gave Barry Zito is routinely cited as the worst contract in the game. A few years ago, people said the same thing about Kevin Brown’s seven-year, $105 million deal.

But the Yankees won’t blink. Perhaps, they’ll get Santana to compromise at about $22.5 million per year. That’s my guess: Six years, $135 million, leaving them on the hook for seven years, $148 million.

Privately, the Twins keep saying they like the potential match with Boston better. The Twins love Jacoby Ellsbury, and if they can get the Red Sox to add one of their two star pitching prospects — Jon Lester or Clay Buchholz — that might be enough. But the Red Sox insist they won’t trade more than one of those three young pups, and they might not part with Buchholz in any offer.

Personally, I don’t think the Red Sox want to close this deal. I think they are merely trying to keep the price high for the Yankees. If the Twins really were that in love with Ellsbury and settled on a deal with Boston, I don’t think the Red Sox would give Santana the six-year extension. Their current deal with Josh Beckett (signed in July 2006) is only a three-year, $30 million deal with a $12 million option for 2010.

So they’re going to give up two premier prospects for Santana and then pay him five times as much as Beckett? I don’t think so.

At that point, the whole thing would become a giant mess.

I agree with Hank Steinbrenner that the Yankees have the best offer on the table. From what I’ve gathered, the Angels, Dodgers and Mariners are barely in this thing. We haven’t heard much from the Mets, who don’t have the pitching prospects to replace Santana (and Matt Garza).

I spoke with an NL scout yesterday, who compared Melky Cabrera very favorably to Ellsbury. His team grades players on an 80-scale, and he said Cabrera is a 55-60, projecting him as a slightly above average every day center fielder, while Ellsbury is a 60-65.

Ellsbury’s stock is way high right now because he thrived for the Red Sox in the World Series. He is a good contact hitter, an on-base specialist, who will line balls into the gaps and race around the bases.

But Cabrera is no slouch. He is a switch-hitter who will generate more power. He doesn’t run like Ellsbury, but he has a cannon arm. The scout projected Cabrera to hit .280-.300 with about 15 homers per year, and while Ellsbury might hit better, he’ll probably average 5-6 home runs per year.

The Red Sox have enough power from the rest of their lineup to have a speedy center fielder who gets on base but doesn’t hit the ball over the fence. That’s not true of the Twins, who relied on Torii Hunter for defense and power.

Ellsbury hit 10 home runs in 1,017 minor-league at-bats. Still, he had a .389 on-base percentage, .425 slugging, for an .814 OPS.

Cabera hit 27 home runs in 1,432 career minor-league at-bats, and his career minor-league OPS was an unimpressive .728.

Cabrera’s numbers from last season with the Yankees aren’t all that impressive either, as his OPS was .718. He had a terrible April and September, but if you look at the four months in the middle, his month-by-month OPS was .762, .811, .939, .818. He thrived during that period when the Yankees started using him as their everyday center fielder.

Ellsbury is 24. Cabrera is 23. So there is upside with both of them.

We have heard that the Twins think Ellsbury is the best player any team has offered them, with Phil Hughes second. I don’t get it. I spoke to two scouts yesterday — one from each league — who both said Hughes is a legit top-of-the-rotation starter. Three pitches. The steely nerves. The whole package.

I don’t blame the Yankees for not wanting to part with Hughes and Ian Kennedy in the same deal. While Hughes projects as a No. 1-2 starter, Kennedy projects as a solid No. 4, one scout told me.

But hopefully the Twins can convince the Yankees to part with Class A outfielder Austin Jackson. He has a nice ceiling, and he’s far enough from the majors, that the Yankees should be able to justify including him for Santana.

Hughes and Cabrera is a nice start, but the third player is key. Hank is huffing and puffing, fuming and fretting. He wants an answer now.

Let’s see if the Twins blink.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 11:18 am and is filed under Around MLB, Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.