The New King of Queens

Johan Santana is now officially a New York Met. The New York Mets sent 4 young prospects to the Minnesota Twins for the 2-time Cy-Young winner. Now the trade itself should come as no suprise to baseball fans, the Twins had been talking about dealing Santana for months now because they could not afford to pay him the amount of money he wanted. The suprising part of this trade is the players the Twins received for Santana. The four prospects the Mets traded are Carlos Gomez, Phillip Humber, Kevin Mulvey, and Deolis Guerra. Only one of these players, Carlos Gomez, has major league experience and none of the players were exactly regarded as top, can't miss prospects. Other teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox offered deals to Minnesota with more proven talent. I mean as a die hard Met fan I am very pleased with this trade, but if your a Twins fan you have to be pretty upset about this deal.

With Johan Santana in a Mets uniform this year this team looks ready for a World Series run. Santana is in the prime of his career and has led all of baseball in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average in the last 5 years. He will join a Mets team with a lot of talent on it already. The Mets pitching staff now looks like one of the best in the majors and the will again have a very solid lineup. Santana will also be moving to the National League where the teams have weaker lineups than the American League and he will also be pitching in Shea Stadium which is known as a pitcher's ballpark. Both these factors should mean in improvement in Santana's stats for this year.

While there are many reasons to believe this final season at Shea Stadium will be a good year for the Mets, you still have to remember this team blew an unthinkable 7 game lead with 17 games left to play last year to lose the division title and miss the playoffs. Also this will be the first time Johan Santana will be pitching in a big market city in New York. He has spent his entire career in Minnesota, where there is less pressure to win. He will now be on the big stage in New York for the first time and will have to deal with the tough New York media.

With all things considered I feel the Mets should be one of the favorites to win the World Series this year. On paper this team looks like one of the best in baseball, but no team has ever won a championship on paper. How good will the Mets be this year? We will have to wait for the season to begin to find out.