Sell the Whole Farm for Santana

There has never been a pitcher quite like Johan Santana. You could call him a left-handed Pedro Martinez, but that would insult his uniqueness. Once thought too short to be a starter, the reticent Venezuelan hero has been the key to this decade's baseball renaissance in Minnesota, during which the Twins have made four trips to the playoffs and won approval for a new ballpark. With an explosive fastball, a notorious changeup, and total control of both, the peerlessly efficient Santana has dominated in the game's deepest division. He is the best pitcher in the sport as unquestionably as Martinez once was, and as Greg Maddux was before him.

After this coming season, Santana, 28, will be a free agent. While the Twins have reportedly offered a contract extension, it will likely take something near $150 million to keep Santana off the market, so there is a very real possibility that he will be traded. This has Yankees fans asking whether it would be worth giving up a young pitcher like Philip Hughes or even Joba Chamberlain as part of a package to land Santana. It's a silly question — if they can, they should.

There's no way to know if Santana will fetch a player as prized as Chamberlain, but he well could. Very few teams have both the young players it would take to land Santana and the money it would take to re-sign him. Happily for Minnesota, some of the most fertile farms in the game belong to Boston, both Los Angeles teams, and the Yankees. This sets up the potential for the bidding war to end all bidding wars. To win it, some team will have to give up not just real talent, but something untouchable — and they probably won't regret it.

On June 3, 2004, Santana gave up four runs in a loss, dropping the Twins two games out of first. He made 22 more starts that year and gave up two or fewer runs in 21 of them. In the other, he gave up three. The Twins took the division by nine games, and Santana won the Cy Young Award. He should have won it the next year, and he did win the year after that. This year, his worst as a starter, he rated first in the league in base-runners per inning, third in strikeouts per inning, sixth in innings pitched, and seventh in earned run average. In five career playoff starts, four of which have been against the Yankees, his ERA is a sterling 2.93.

This gaudy résumé vastly understates how valuable Santana is. Among pitchers, he is by far the surest bet in baseball; he literally has no weaknesses.

Still in his early prime, Santana throws in the middle 90s, changes speeds masterfully, and has unrivaled control, and thus should be able to easily adjust when, years from now, he does lose a bit of his edge to age. He has never thrown more than 120 pitches in a game, and despite this has averaged 228 innings the last four years. From 25 to 28, he has pitched 912.1 innings, and his park-adjusted ERA has been 56% better than average. Since integration, two pitchers have done better at the same ages while pitching at least 800 innings: Martinez and Maddux. Roger Clemens's mark was exactly the same.

The only recent parallel for a pitcher anywhere near this young and this good being traded is Martinez. In 1997, just 25, having won his first Cy Young Award for Montreal and in the last year of his contract, he was even more desirable than Santana is now. The Red Sox ended up having to relinquish Carl Pavano and Tony Armas Jr. for him. At the time, Pavano was Baseball America's no. 9 prospect. Armas was highly regarded for his great pedigree and a terrific fastball. This isn't notable just because Pavano was arguably as good a prospect then as Hughes is now; it's also notable because he actually represents something like the downside of trading a prospect for a truly great pitcher like Martinez or Santana. Pavano may be the punchline to a bad joke, but despite the fact that his greatest achievement as a Yankee was to miss a rehab start with a bruised butt cheek, he's had a good career. He was the best pitcher on a world champion in 2003.

It's unlikely that Hughes will do as much, given the reality that young pitchers just get hurt a lot and sometimes mysteriously fail to develop. To invoke another top prospect of a decade ago who suspiciously resembles a top Yankees prospect of today, it's unlikely that Chamberlain will have a career nearly as good as that of Kerry Wood, whom Montreal could not have had for Martinez. And both Pavano and Wood are considered terrible disappointments.

None of this is a knock on the Yankees' terrific young pitchers; hopefully they will go on to long and prosperous careers. Even should one of them do so on another team, though, no one will care all that much if that career and a lot of money bought the rest of Santana's prime. Hughes and Chamberlain are not ordinary prospects, but Santana is not an ordinary great pitcher.

tmarchman@nysun.com