Bill Smith Era Doomed by the Johan Santana Trade for the Minnesota Twins

Bill Smith was the heir apparent to former Minnesota Twins general manager Terry Ryan for many years. This was the guy who was supposed take the foundation that Ryan had built and bring it to the next level.

The Twins were going to progress under Smith and take a step towards winning the team's third World Series championship.

On Monday, the Bill Smith era officially ended. The Twins fired Smith and appointed Ryan as the team's interim general manager.

While there were successes in Smith's tenure, such as two division championships, he will be more infamous for the mistakes he made along the way. No mistake was bigger than the Johan Santana trade.

When Smith took over, his first priority was to get something for Santana, as he was going to leave for free agency after the 2008 season. Smith was the focal point of the winter meetings that year, as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox had a bidding war for Santana's services.

Nobody knows what really went on in those meetings, but it was rumored that the Red Sox were willing to give up a package which included the Twins choice of OF Jacoby Ellsbury or P Jon Lester, SS Jed Lowrie and P Justin Masterson. All of these players had promising futures in the majors, but Smith turned the deal down.

Instead, Smith went to the paper-thin farm system of the New York Mets to get a return on Santana. In the final deal, the Twins received OF Carlos Gomez, P Philip Humber, P Delois Guerra and P Kevin Mulvey for the two-time Cy Young Award winner.

This crippled the Twins farm system, as not only did the Twins get a lousy return, but they tried to make up for it by trading these pieces for even more mediocre pieces. Carlos Gomez was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers for SS J.J. Hardy. Mulvey was sent to the Arizona Diamondbacks for P Jon Rauch.

Other pieces in the trade simply struggled. Guerra was not the prospect that some scouts thought he would be, as the Mets rushed him through their farm system. Humber was terrible at the major league level, and was designated for assignment to make room for the immortal Juan Morillo.

All of this sent the Twins into a free fall that they still haven't recovered from. As they've watched the Red Sox offer look better and better by the second, the Twins have played awful baseball and doomed Smith in the process.

If Smith had accepted the Red Sox' offer, the Twins probably wouldn't be a 99-loss team. The needs of a staff ace or a MVP candidate, shortstop and a No. 2 starter would have been filled. Instead, the Twins are a 99-loss team looking for a figure from the past to put them back together.