Cheech Tremendous

That's not the BA list above, it's Baseball Prospectus. Baseball America should have their list out next week. You could also check John Sickels. It's hard to find consistency from list to list. Every scout has their own system for rating prospects and lists can vary heavily based on this. Some will rate their prospects on ceiling, while others rate it on closeness to majors and the likelihood of reaching their potential. Fernando Martinez is a very young player with a monster ceiling. The chances of him reaching that ceiling at this point are slim. How each side treats that explains the discrepancy in his rating. Outside of the top 10, these lists are a crapshoot.

Baseball Prospectus' Top 100 Prospects - 2008

That seems like a really shitty trade for everybody.

We need Freddy Mercury to come in here and call everybody faggots.

Yeah, sure, that sounds about right. I guess that's an old WCW thing? I really don't know, I just remember watching it at my cousin's place... they were WCW kids, I was WWF, so I didn't really know what was going on at the time, just vaguely remember the concept. Reading this makes me feel old.

Did you really have to quote that entire post just to say that?

I seriously doubt that they'd bring back their biggest star from injury and have him win the world title only to job it one month later to HHH. That doesn't make any sense.

Like anyone cares.

Remember when Wrestlemania was used to blow off a hot feud and transition the world title to the company's top babyface? This is going to be the third year in a row that Cena has successfully defended his title in the main event at Wrestlemania. If the fed is going to go to such lengths to protect the titles with lengthy reigns, why do title changes at throwaway PPVs?

I heard about that one earlier. I'm not sure why Portland would get involved in this and give up three talented pieces for Devin Harris. Am I underrating Devin Harris?

This was during the era that Jimmy Hart booked Saturday Night and it was supposed to exist in its own self-contained world. Some of the wrestlers appeared on Nitro/Thunder and vice versa, but the Saturday Night show seemed to exist outside of the normal WCW canon. The TV title was given to the show to be their de facto top belt.

A wrestling reference? No wonder I didn't get it.

Who the hell is Colin Delaney?

JN News checks in with a head-scratcher:

He got X-Pac heat. That's a type of heat.

I still can't even figure out what went down. Probably because I don't care.

What a revelation! This will shake TSM to its foundation.

The package the Twins are getting for Santana is far less than the one Baltimore was offered for Bedard. Hell, it's probably worse than what they got for Matt Garza.

Songs that will remind me of Dave Lagana: "Tell Me A Lie"

On paper, they are the best team in the National League heading into the season. They just added the best pitcher in baseball and did so without giving up anyone who would be expected to contribute next year. A rotation of Johan, Pedro, Perez, Maine, Hernandez looks formidable and the offense is still one of the best.

Freddie = lead singer from Queen... known homosexual Freddy = bad TSM poster... possible homosexual See the difference?

If the aforementioned deal holds true, I can't see this as being anything other than a resounding success for the Mets (and to a degree, the Yankees and Red Sox). I don't know if I'd go so far as to call this an abject failure for Bill Smith and the Twins, but it at least looks that way on the surface and unless these prospects succeed to a much higher degree than expected, it could cost Smith his job down the road. The Twins set out to get impact bats and major league ready talent. In this deal, they get none. The four prospects are ranked 2, 3, 4 and 7 respectively in the Mets system by Baseball America, but they all rate out as B+ to B- talent. There is no future superstar in the bunch. Gomez is a five tool talent in the outfield, but very raw physically. He probably needs another year at AA to get things worked out. Mulvey, Guerra and Humber are decent back of the rotation guys, none of whom rate as highly as Hughes, Lester or Kennedy. In fact, they are even suspect compared to the Twins other top young pitching talent. Guerra has the best stuff, but he's also the farthest away. Humber was a former first round pick signed to a huge bonus, but that has yet to translate at the professional level. In the end, I have to think that the Twins decided that they weren't going to send Santana to another AL team, or the Yankees/Sox pulled their offers when they heard the contract demands. Santana reportedly turned down the Twins final offer of 5 years, $100 million which caused the team to move on with the trade. If that's the case and other teams knew this, it might have severely weakened the packsages being offered.

USA Today breaks story Rosenthal says Santana to Mets, pending contract extension Deal seems to be in place, according to USA Today. It will send Santana to the Mets for Carlos Gomez, Kevin Mulvey, Deolis Guerra and Phil Humber. I'll be back in a little while with some thoughts after I do a little more work on the prospects involved. On the surface, it is an inferior deal to previous Yankees and Red Sox offers, indicating that those two teams backed off or the Twins had different evaluations than most scouts.

Michael Wilbon from Padron The Interruption suffered a mild heart attack yesterday.