Ellsbury’s mL ISO D was .076., Gomez’s was .058.

Elllsbury has more power and more plate discipline. I think Ellsbury will have a far better career.

My point was with regard to what the Twins requested (we don’t know that the Yankees actually offered Hughes). As such, it doesn’t matter what the Sox offered. According to numerous media reports, the Twins wanted Lester or Ellsbury included in any package. Obviously, Lester had a breakout season, but even if the trade had been centered around Ellsbury, who had a very disappointing 2008 season, it would have been a better trade for the Twins than the deal the Mets offered because Ellsbury will likely be a significantly better player than Gomez.

(The reported supplemental assets that were requested from the Yankees and Sox were also better than those included in the Mets’ deal.)

It seems apparent that the Twins took less from the Mets because they wanted Santana out of the AL.

The Twins should have kept Santana, but that’s a separate issue.

The Twins would have been better off keeping Santana for ‘08. But they probably didn’t expect to contend, and only really did so thanks to fluky hitting with RISP.

It will be a while before the trade that did happen can be weighed. Does Gomez turn into a decent hitter? Does Guerra get back on track? Is Mulvey more of a 3 or more of a 5? We’ll see.

From a value wins perspective, three of the players involved in the trade saw time in the majors last year:

Johan Santana: +4.8 value wins

Carlos Gomez: +2.4 value wins
Phil Humber: -0.1 value wins

Santana was going to be a free agent after 2008, so we’d have a +4.8 win value plus two draft picks to show for him had we held on. Yes, I believe that we would have made the playoffs last year with Santana, but remember that CF was highly uncertain before last year started. Most viewed Denard Span as a bust, and Jason Pridie was a prospect and we didn’t really know what we had there either. Even if we made the playoffs last year, with the way Liriano and Morneau faded down the stretch, I doubt we would have made it past Tampa Bay in the first round. Of course, the playoffs are a crapshoot, but Minnesota was not at its strongest in September.

Looking forward to 2009, I have to believe Gomez will provide at least the +2.4 value wins he gave us in 2008. Of course, it’s more valuable to get the value wins in one year versus spread over two, but I also think Humber and Mulvey will provide value next year (I’m guessing +0.5 to +1.0 value wins combined) at the major league level.

Even if you consider Gomez’ 2008 as a baseline and he doesn’t improve over the next three years, I would rather have +2.4 value wins from my center fielder over the next four years, plus three prospects, over one year of +4.8 wins.

Of course, I would have preferred to make a more serious run at extending Santana before the 2007 season than waiting until after the season. At that point, he was as good as gone. Here’s hoping the Twins don’t make the same mistake with Joe Mauer.