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Mets, Santana Finalize Six-Year Contract Extension
By Administrator | February 1, 2008
Johan Santana held all of the cards all along. He held a gun to the Twins head and forced a horrible trade. And then he held a gun to the Mets head to force them to agree to the richest contract awarded to a pitcher in MLB history.
The standard seventy-two hour post-trade window wasn’t enough for the parties to get a deal finalized, so the Commissioner’s Office granted them a two-hour extension. Ninety minutes later, the Metropolitans capitulated and agreed to a six-year contract extension worth $137.5 million. Including the last year of his current deal, the Mets are now committed to Santana for seven years and more than $150 million.
Seven years and $150 million. For a soon-to-be 29-year-old pitcher. Remarkable. But the Mets had to do it… after negotiating such a one-sided trade with the Twins, can you imagine what the reaction would have been in New York had they allowed Santana to return to the Mets because of money? The fans in Flushing would have screamed for Omar Minaya’s scalp.
Santana will take a physical tomorrow… other players will also have to pass a physical before the deal is ‘finalized’. When (if) the deal is completed, his average annual salary of $22.92 million is second only to A-Rod’s $27.5 million. He will receive a $7 million signing bonus.
Santana is 93-44 with a 3.22 ERA in eight major league seasons and he has won 2 Cy Young Awards (2004, 2006). But there may be ominous signs on the horizon: he finished 2007 with only a 15-13 record while dropping seven of his final eleven decisions… his ERA rose from 2.60 to 3.33 ERA in those final eleven games… and he allowed a career-high 33 homers (the most in the AL).
Topics: Around Baseball |
