Two experts from Baseball America told the Boston Herald the best reported offer on the table for Johan Santana is Boston’s offer of Jon Lester, Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie and Justin Masterson.

[John] Manuel prefers the Red Sox’ offer topped by lefty Jon Lester and center fielder Coco Crisp because he thinks Lester can be a middle-of-the-rotation starter and that the other offer features the Sox selling “high” with outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.

“If they thought Jed Lowrie (.393 combined on-base percentage in Double A and Triple A last year) could be a major league shortstop, the Twins have to make that deal,” Manuel said. “The Twins are holding out for more offense. … None of these offers fit the Twins’ needs.”

Jim Callis, executive editor of Baseball America, said that even if the Yankees were to include right-hander Ian Kennedy in their offer or the Mets were to include hitting phenom Fernando Martinez, neither team’s package would be better than the Lester-Crisp package (Callis’ first choice) or the Ellsbury (No. 2 for Callis) offer.

Callis goes on to say, “If the Twins wanted to roll the dice, the Mets’ offer (with Martinez) could be the best deal.” But both Callis and Manuel agreed that the Twins would be taking a leap of faith by taking it because the players are so green.

Martinez and Deolis Guerra are years from reaching the majors. And even though the others are more advanced, Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber and Kevin Mulvey remain unproven at the big league level.

Meanwhile, amid the circus of on-again, off-again Yankee rumblings yesterday, I wrote about the possibility of the Twins overplaying their hand.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 9:25 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.