Bullet list, 'Best Pitcher in Baseball' edition.

• At his blog for ESPN Insider (free preview entry), Keith Law thinks the Mets were big winners in this deal, though he's quick to point out his warning signs:

  Santana is not without his red flags; he stumbled to the finish in 2007 and in the past has had elbow chips, a problem that tends to recur. He's become more flyball-oriented recently, leading to a big spike in his home run rate this year; the acquisition could encourage the Citi Field architects to push the fences back a few feet. And the days of him shouldering 230-240 innings a year may be behind him, although facing the pitcher two or three times a game may help him recover some of the lost workload.

  I love Keith, but the bit about Santana becoming more flyball oriented just doesn't seem to be true. Here are his flyball rates for the last six seasons. I have also included his homeruns-per-flyball rate to give you a better idea of why his homeruns allowed jumped last season:

  Year	FB%	HR/FB%
  2002	46.7%	5.7%
  2003	47.7%	8.5%
  2004	43.2%	10.3%
  2005	43.2%	8.4%
  2006	39.6%	9.9%
  2007	43.6%	13.1%

  2006 looks like the outlier in his flyball rate, but 2007 -- his big homerun allowed year -- his flyball rate was right back where it was before '06 and almost identical to his career mark of 43.5%. You'll notice that his homeruns per flyball increased dramatically last year, so either opponents are hitting the ball harder (not likely, considering his linedrive rate actually decreased in 2007), or maybe all of those extra homeruns were just flukey. Per Hit Tracker, his average homerun distance actually decreased from 393.4 feet in 2006 to 391.1 feet last year. Weird.

• Bob Klapisch has all of the details on the Mets' acquisition of Santana yesterday. You can also check out the requisite Santana articles in The Post, The Daily News, and Newsday.
• Aaron Gleeman breaks things down as only Aaron can:

  In poker terms, Smith slow-played a big hand and ended up dragging in less than the maximum pot. It's hard to swallow the possibility that the Twins missed out on acquiring Hughes and Melky Cabrera or Ellsbury, Jed Lowrie, and Justin Masterson. Those were very good offers for Santana and without Martinez included the Mets' offer falls short of those standards. However, there's a difference between the Mets' offer not being the best one and the Mets' offer not being a decent one.

• At Twinkie Town, our buddy Jesse tries to put a shine on the prospects the Twins got (whom we know all so well). I talked with Jesse for a while last night, and he was far less apoplectic than most of the commenters at his site. Given the circumstances, GM Bill Smith was over a barrel -- partially his own doing -- and he made the best deal he could.

  These four players aren't bad players. They simply aren't Philip Hughes, Melky Cabrera, Jacoby Ellsbury or Jon Lester. Both Carlos Gomez and Deolis Guerra have a chance to turn into special players, Phil Humber will more than likely break camp with the Twins in the spring, and Kevin Mulvey has some upside as well.

  Even after we've separated our feelings of "what we should have received" from "what exactly did we get", it's going to be hard to be happy with what transpired yesterday. That's entirely natural, because we did just trade the best starting pitcher in baseball. Just remember that this deal was made with the future in mind, which coincides with A) not bringing back Torii Hunter, B) trading for one of the game's most promising young hitters and C) locking up Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer to long-term deals.

  I'll have a Q&A with Jesse up later on today, in all likelihood, so we can get some firsthand reaction from the other side of the tracks.
• We've got a reaction roundtable up at MetsGeek today, so be sure to check that out.
• MLB.com has player reaction to the deal from Billy Wagner, David Wright, Aaron Heilman and Tom Glavine. Wags is stoked:

  "If we get Johan Santana, we're back to being one of the five best teams in the game. I couldn't be happier. I know we'll all feel that way."

  For his part, Glavine tried not to get too worked up:

  "This certainly evens the balance within the division. I don't think this makes [the Mets] the class of the division. I think it puts them in a position where there rotation is much better and that was their biggest need.

  Within the division, I think you have three teams that can now not only win the division, but also the World Series. I think all three teams did a nice job of filling their biggest needs."

• Beyond the Boxscore, our SBNation blog on sabermetrics, counts down Johan's ten best starts of his career. Head over there and read about what the Mets are getting (Hint: it's a very good pitcher).
• In the New York Sun, Tim Marchman applauds the deal:

  Some baseball operators know many small things, and some know one big thing. The general manager of the Mets, Omar Minaya, knows one big thing — if you can afford it, you always go for the best player on the market.

  *snip*

  By trading for 28-year-old left-hander Johan Santana, generally considered the best pitcher in baseball, Minaya has outdone himself.

More in the comments.

This week I participated in a blogger roundtable at MetsBlog with a few of my fellow Mets bloggers. We discussed the impending returns of Moises Alou and Pedro Martinez as well as the upcoming trade deadline. So, if you can't get enough of me (and you know you can't), go check it out.

Fire Joe Morgan has their latest hilarious response to Steve Phillips's latest bout of irrefutable logic. The ESPN piece involves a number of that site's contributors discussing Sammy Sosa's Hall of Fame candidacy. Phillips joins the fray in his own tragically ludicrous (or is it ludicrously tragic?) way.

I personally have little affection for the Hall itself. Any institution that would induct Bruce Sutter and not Goose Gossage (or Rik Aalbert Blyleven for cripes' sake) has little credibility in my book. Feel free to share your thoughts on Mr. Sosa.

John Sickels continues his Crystal Ball series at Minor League Ball with Jose Reyes. John projects performance based on the results of other similar players. Kind of like PECOTA, only using John's brain instead of a computer.

At his blog for the New York Post, Kevin Kernan explains why batting David Wright second -- as he did to start today's exhibition game -- makes a whole lot of sense.

Batting Wright second would create so many scoring opportunities, just like the first inning today here at Tradition Field. If Reyes gets on, with his speed he can steal second so you don't need the two-hitter to give himself up that much. Then Wright can hack away.

Reyes lined out in the first, Wright then doubled to right; another good sign, hitting the ball the other way and Carlos Beltran bombed a triple off the centerfield wall, scoring Wright. Delgado scored on Carlos Delgado's sacrifice fly to left. Lo Duca could slide into the six hole behind Moises Alou. Alou, if healthy, is a solid No. 5 hitter. By batting Wright second you also have, what I call, the turnover effect. When the lineup turns over later in the game and if there are men on base, Reyes and Wright give you RBI power right at the top.

Wright batting second is a much better idea than Lo Duca batting second. Wright has plenty of pop, but he isn't really a power hitter and would probably be better served as a table-setter. Lo Duca makes plenty of contact, but he has no power and never walks. As Kernan points out, Jose Reyes doesn't need anybody's help getting from first to second, and it makes zero sense to send Lo Duca up there to give himself up either via bunt or right-side groundout.

Let Wright tote his high-three-hundreds on-base percentage into the two-hole so that the big bats -- Carloses Beltran and Delgado, and Moises Alou -- have ducks on the pond to drive in. As Manny Acta will tell you, a team will score more runs with a man on first and no outs than with a man on second and one out.

I like Lo Duca quite a bit, but the odds of him hitting .318 and reaching base 35% of the time as he did last year are extremely long indeed.

I've been dying for an excuse to link to this blog, and now I have it. Joe Posnanski recently started a blog to support his new book. For those who don't know, Poz is a writer for the Kansas City Star and, quite simply, one of the best sportswriters in the country. His new book, titled The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O'Neil's America, records the baseball legend's endless travels and stories involving the sport. Poz's blog has become a daily read for me.

Today, he finally gave me my chance with this post on new Met Ambiorix Burgos:

That's the feeling Burgos inspires. You would have killed to have his arm. Instead you have to watch him shake off fastballs because he's in love with his splitter, you have to watch him throw fastballs high and outside and get into 3-1 counts, then you have to watch him groove thigh-high fastballs over the heart of the plate that hitters tattoo into the bleachers (the guy gave up 16 bombs in 73 innings last year ... and every single one of them, it seemed, cost the Royals a game). He wasn't a bad pitcher. He was an insult to pitching.

Read the whole post; it's definitely worth reading. Burgos is certainly promising, but it's important to remember that there are plenty of promising pitchers who disappoint and are given opportunity after opportunity to frustrate fans over and over again.

But hey, maybe Rick Peterson is the one who can fix him.

Finally, SBNation has its very own Giants' blog. It's called Big Blue View, and it's written by Ed Valentine. Stop by and say "Hi". Or, if you're not a G-Men fan, just wait for JetsGeek to open its doors.

The Mets start Spring Training on Friday, so that means that every paper in the city printed the exact same stories and previews yesterday. Pick your poison:

• Newsday
• The Post
• The Daily News
• The Bergen Record
• The Newark Star-Ledger
• The Journal News
• The Hartford Courant

Congratulations are due to the Times for being the only paper not to put out the easy story. The one thing you definitely notice scouring the media's sports coverage everyday is exactly how formulaic newspapers really are. Spring Training is probably  the single day where this is most obvious.

For a slightly less formulaic spin on the Mets' rotation, Tim Marchman of the New York Sun notices that the Mets have brought in a ton of pitchers:

What's impressive, though, is that this group, while perhaps not representing a sure improvement on last year's in terms of quality, represents a great improvement in terms of potential. If Maine, Perez, and Pelfrey all harness their stuff and master the intricacies of the game to their best abilities, the Mets will have a trio of cheap young starters to match any in the league, and a potent young core. That's likely not going to happen, but giving the ball to pitchers who won't pitch any worse than a Trachsel-type, but might pitch much better, is a very good idea. Is the potential for disaster there? Of course, it always is. In the Mets' case, they have the right pitchers showing up to camp tomorrow, they're not asking too much of them, and they have some backup plans. You can't ask for much more.

Marchman is dead on here. The Mets grabbed a bunch of guys with a high upside -- Oliver Perez, John Maine, Mike Pelfrey, Phil Humber -- and they're hedging their bets by stockpiling veteran arms like Aaron Sele, Chan Ho Park, and Jorge Sosa. One of the things that great teams are able to do, is to anticipate problems by having solutions ready in advance, the ability to turn an "F" into a "C." It's what the Braves have been doing for years.

Over at ESPN, John Shea contributes to their Hot Stove Heaters series by giving the Mets the nod for the best lineup around. Shea, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, is especially enamored with the Moises Alou signing:

The Mets hit .254 against lefties, second-worst in National League last season. Alou's mark against lefties in 2006: .349.

In San Francisco, Alou was the second-biggest threat behind Barry Bonds. In New York, he'll simply be one of many threats. With Beltran, Delgado and David Wright at the heart of the order, Alou will be a supplementary piece along with Shawn Green, Paul Lo Duca and Jose Valentin. Jose Reyes, as the get-it-going guy at the top of the batting order, swiped 64 bases and scored 122 runs last year.

The Alou signing had to rank among the winter's smartest, as it came at a minimal cost to the Mets, gives them that sorely needed lefty masher, and provides some protection for David Wright, who struggled in the second half last year.

Shea puts the Cubs next (they'll have to raise that OBA -- .319 last season -- by quite a bit to improve that much), followed by the Yankees, Indians, Twins, and Rangers.

Winter arrived in New York after all, but pitchers and catchers is just around the corner. In the meantime, here are some news and notes:

• If you want tickets to the Mets' home opener on April 9th, the team is letting fans register for a drawing that will be held on Monday, February 19th. The same goes for Subway Series tickets against the Yankees from May 18th to May 20th.
• Newsday provides a look at Omar Minaya's trip to Ghana, where he's accompanied by the likes of Dave Winfield, Dusty Baker, and Reggie Smith. Here's a taste:

  But yesterday, some of the major leagues' biggest names saw some promising talent.

  "The kids are much further along than we thought," said Winfield, a former Yankees outfielder and now the vice president of the San Diego Padres.

  "Everybody doesn't play soccer or American football. This is another option to stay healthy and learn about life," he said, adding that baseball will help Ghanaian children gain American college scholarships.

  Obviously any serious talent is going to require at least ten years to emerge, but it's interesting to see Major League Baseball opening up new markets.

• Finally, Ken Rosenthal looks for the next Justin Verlander. He mostly focuses on the Yankees' Philip Hughes and the Reds' Homer Bailey. While both certainly can match up to Verlander's stuff, neither has Verlander's experience. All three were drafted in the first round of 2004, but Verlander had been pitching for Old Dominion for three years. While Hughes and Bailey are the best pitching prospects around, it might be unfair to predict Verlander-like success for them in 2007.

  Rosenthal does give Mike Pelfrey a mention, though:

  A better comparison to Verlander -- at least in terms of experience -- is Mets right-hander Mike Pelfrey, a collegian who was the ninth pick of the '05 draft. Pelfrey, 23, is entering his second pro season, just as Verlander was a year ago. But while Pelfrey is a top prospect, he isn't as highly regarded as Hughes and Bailey.

  Pelfrey, despite his lack of a secondary pitch, still put up some huge numbers in the minors. Like Hughes and Bailey, though, he'll start the year in AAA, but if he makes some progress with his slider, he could start being mentioned in the same breath.