Johan Santana

I am quite relieved that Johan Santana went to the Mets and not the Sox. I would have liked to see him land on the other side of NY, but if that wasn't to be, then at least he isn't in the AL East. I think that he would have put the Sox in dynasty mode if he went there. Especially for what they were offering. In fact, I think that the new Twins GM blew this one bigtime. Both of the Sox offers and the Yankee offer were better than the one that they actually accepted in the end. In fact, I think that the Mets offer was even better earlier in the off season then it was last week. With the fact that Peter Angelos won't allow Bedard to be traded to an AL East team, it looks like the Yanks are probably done with their big moves. I see that they signed Morgan Ensberg to a minor league contract. He might factor in at 1B from time to time, but that isn't a big move.

My next consideration is what to do to improve that bullpen. If they can't make any moves to bolster the pen, I don't see how they get around putting Joba back into that role from last year. Hopefully Ohlendorf can be the 7th inning guy, and then Farnsworth, Hawkins et al can be the middle relief corp. If they don't make that move and those middle relievers have to be setup men, I think that the Yanks are in trouble.

If Joba is in the pen, that leaves a servicable rotation of Wang, Pettitte, Hughes, Kennedy and Mussina. But there still is no ace among them. Pitchers and Cathers don't report for another couple of weeks so I won't go off quite yet, but I will just say that I am concerned.