It seems to me, that the Mets fan base is in favor of doing whatever it takes to land Johan Santana. At MetsBlog yesterday, Matthew Cerrone discussed potential trades and ultimately concludes that he’d pull the trigger on a deal for Johan Santana, which would give up 4 pitching prospects, probably Mike Pelfrey, Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra in addition to Carlos Gomez.

Earlier today, Anthony posted his case for unloading the farm for Mr. Santana.

I’m here to convince you otherwise.

By trading four pitching prospects, plus the very ‘toolsy’ Carlos Gomez for Johan, its essentially mortgaging most of our farm system in favor of winning right now, as well as mortgaging all of our financial flexibility because we’d have to sign Johan to the 7 year deal he seeks, hovering arounds $20 million a year.

We’re all crying for “Freddy Coupon” to open up the wallet for Johan now, and we’ll be set. So we trade for him, but then we want a new LF after Alou is gone, but wait, we’ve given up our financial flexibility on Johan. But it’s a double whammy. Having less financial wiggle room would be OK—if you had people in the farm system who could be used as replacements. However, those players who could be useful at the Major League level anytime soon will then be a part of the Minnesota Twins organization.

So what would we be getting with Johan?

He’ll be 29 when the season starts. Granted we’ll probably get a few years of very solid production out of him, but there are so many variables that can come into play with a pitcher, mainly injuries. There is always the possibility he tears his rotator cuff, a ligament in his elbow and requires serious, career threatening surgery. That leaves us with millions of dollars on the table that handcuff our franchise for years. Even less daunting, is the chance he develops minor injuries as he ages such as recurrent hamstring problems that allow him to make only 25 starts a year. He could even age poorly and we’re stuck with an expensive, unproductive pitcher for a couple years. Injury concerns may seem far fetched, but pitchers’ injuries are so unpredictable and unreliable, and I’m not comfortable investing that much talent and money in a guy that only plays every fifth day.

Injuries aside, he has a 4.41 post season ERA, so we can be sure he’ll carry us to that postseason title. (heavy sarcasm)

Should we lock up Oliver Perez long term, after this following season we’ll only have two shoe-ins for our rotation in 2009: Perez and John Maine. By trading for Johan, we have a third mainstay in our rotation for years to come, but we have to look elsewhere for starters four and five. Our system will be depleted, and our wallet will be emptied into the hands of Johan Santana, so we’ll likely be left with unfortunate options as our fourth and fifth starters.

We don’t know what type of careers Mulvey, Pelfrey, Humber and Guerra will have. Guerra is 18 and everybody seems to rave about him. Everybody seems to really like Mulvey too. However, people seem to be down on Pelfrey and Humber. Humber is still recovering from Tommy John Surgery, and if you look at the numbers, starters bounce back two years after surgery. Best example: Chris Carpenter. Let Humber regain arm strength and we’ll see what comes from that. People express concern over Pelfrey’s lack of a second pitch, but I’ll take a 6′7″ 23 year old with a mid 90 mph sinker any day. It would be a grand mistake to sell low on a prospect, as we would be doing with Pelfrey and Humber.

The way things are looking now, unless either the Twins or Red Sox cave on their demands its very possible Johan will be a free agent next year. Do we not have the patience to wait a year and save the five top prospects we’d be losing?

In addition to Santana, C.C. Sabathia, Ben Sheets and Brad Penny can all become free agents next year. Save five prospects to have one season’s patience. If everybody is so gung-ho about being impatient and demanding to win now, why was everybody in such an uproar when Milledge was traded?

Beyond the four top pitchers we could lose, Carlos Gomez is faster than Jose Reyes–according to Reyes. He’s less developed at the plate and plays a less important position, but you can’t teach being tall and you can’t teach being fast. Alou is presumably gone after this year, and Church is solid but not a long term answer. Gomez would be great to groom for 2009 and Church could hold the fort until Fernando Martinez is ready.

We can sign somebody such as Bartolo Colon or Freddy Garcia to fill in this year, and next year pounce on the strong pitcher market.

In summation:

• We’d be investing all of our financial flexibility in one player, and that player only plays every fifth day.
• Its very possible we’d be able to go after him in free agency after this season, and we’d be sacrificing five top prospects in order to get one extra year of Johan.
• While they probably will never be as good as Mr. Santana, we have yet to see what our prospects can do and we’d be selling low on Pelfrey and Humber despite the facts we have reason to have a positive outlook for them.
• Gomez has speed that comes along once in a long time, and it’d be disappointing to see him develop into a star so far away from us, especially because we have a hole in the OF opening up next year.

I’m all in favor of trading for Santana. But four pitching prospects plus Gomez? No thank you. Take out one of the pitchers, and leave us with something to work with, I’ll probably bite. But all those prospects is just taking our chips and pushing them all in on this hand (this year) something we feel pressured to do after The Collapse, but in truth–by not making this trade we might be less likely to win this year, but we can maximize our winning over the next ten years.