The people have spoken, and they continue to speak. Roughly 79 percent of you (out of 11,000 as of 7:30 a.m.) think the Twins didn’t get enough for Johan Santana. At face value, the majority is correct. It’s hard to swallow losing the best pitcher in baseball for a handful of possibilities. But once the anger subsides, this deal needs to be looked at from all angles. These are some pretty key facts in understanding how things arrived at the point they did yesterday: 1) Santana rejected a four-year contract extension worth $20 million per year. That would have kept him here through 2012 (counting the one year he had left), giving the Twins three years with him in the new ballpark. He flat-out rejected that offer. 2) Indications are that Santana both stepped up the pressure on the Twins this week and also had a desire to pitch in New York. 3) Once it became clear that the Twins couldn’t, at this point, sign him — and that without him, they are not poised to be make a playoff run in 2008 — a deal for a boatload of prospects might have made more sense than the others that were at least at one point on the table in Boston and New York. Yes, we’ve heard of Jon Lester, Jacoby Ellsbury, Melky Cabrera and Phil Hughes more than the Mets’ prospects. None of them, though, are sure things. Lester is attempting an amazing comeback; Ellsbury had an OPS of 740 in Class AAA last year; Cabrera is Jacque Jones. Hughes was decent in limited action last year. More recognizable and more able to help right away doesn’t necessarily mean better for the long run, which, like it or not, is what this team is playing for right now based on its young pitching that will need at least a year or two to mature. 4) As is well pointed out in this piece passed along by Diddy, Santana’s value diminishes because of the fact that he is only locked in for one more year in his current contract. The Mets, in a sense, traded players for the right to avoid a bidding war for Santana, though they might end up paying him close to market value anyway. It’s much harder to get player-for-player value in a deal like that. That said, where are the Twins culpable in this deal: 1) Did they wait to make their best offer to Santana? That’s to say, should they have been working their [redacteds] off in spring 2007 to get him locked up, when all indications were the market was going to get crazy again? That’s a fair criticism. 2) Did the Twins box themselves into a corner by thinking they would be able to get more from Boston or the Yankees? That’s a fair criticism. 3) Did they let other teams dictate the terms of trade talks too often, thus allowing the Mets an “untouchable” that they should have been able to get? That’s a fair criticism. In the end, though, it’s foolish to think the Twins were too cheap to keep Johan, and it’s wrong to just base the trade on what went out vs. what came in. It’s much more complicated than that.

*Randy Foye sure picked a bad night to make his return. On a different day, based on the uptick in the Wolves’ play of late, it would have been the big story. Instead, his 11 points in 18 minutes of a 96-85 loss at Chicago was a distant second in the local news of the day. Al Jefferson had 20 and 12, continuing a late push for all-star consideration. Reserves will be announced tomorrow. Any thoughts on a guy on an eight-win team getting some love?

*Fasola-link! Nudist holiday flight. Yes.

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