Twins Woes: Bill Smith and the Art of Counterproductive Negotiation

I'm slightly confused here.

Twins GM Bill Smith is generally considered a pretty savvy, clever front office executive...

Johan Santana is a two-time Cy Young winner, the best lefty hurler of the last five years (sorry, Unit), a southpaw who projects out nicely over the latter years of his career given his reliance on a dominant change-up, a 200+ strikeout per year horse...

Simply put, Johan Santana is one of the most enticing, talented assets to hit the free agent market in the last decade, and Bill Smith is supposedly one of the smartest, most efficient general mangers in the game.

So, why, WHY, I ask did the Twins low-ball themselves into accepting a subpar package from the Mets for such an amazing franchise arm?

More importantly, how did the Twins seemingly manage to ratchet down the packages being offered for such a stud, eventually whittling their diamond encrusted gem of a trading piece into a pedestrian piece of synthetic plastic?

Logic would posit the scenario going something like this: Minnesota dangles Johan to the market; Boston, New York (NL and AL), and all the other heavy-hitters throw out offers somewhere in the proximity of market value; Bill Smith chooses between Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester, or Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera, or other offers of equal upside, slowly drawing his high-rolling competitors into a bidding war and eventually emerging with a franchise outfielder or starter plus some mid-level prospects to boot.

So how, and why, did Bill Smith mess this up?

He started off following the game-plan, ratcheting up the offers by tapping into the divisional and regional paranoia inherent in the Boston-New York dichotomy. He had both juggernauts right there, wavering most of their top-level prospects in his face, asking him to bite.

What Bill Smith didn’t realize, is that those were the best offers he was going to see.

With Santana a soon-to-be free agent, Smith had to deal with the reality that his leverage after the winter meetings was only going down. If he wasn’t going to deal Santana at a slight discount now- which was inherently non-negotiable- then he wasn’t going to be able to deal him at all.

Boston and New York were both content to wait until Johan entered the bidding process after the 2008 season. They could take their chances then, when losing a Jacoby Ellsbury or Phil Hughes was no longer a sacrifice they’d have to make. No loss for them considering the talent they already have.

Furthermore, Boston wasn’t giving up Clay Buchholz or any package that involved Ellsbury plus substantive other developmental talent; the Yankees weren’t giving up Joba Chamberlain or a package involving Hughes AND fellow pitching prospect Ian Kennedy, and that was just the awful truth.

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