Joy in Mudville

I haven't been this excited since Endy went over the wall.

OK, OK. First things first, I'm not going to bury the Phillies just yet. They have a very talented club, and the Mets' big move today didn't change that.

That said, January 29, 2008 is a watershed day for our beloved Mets. Underlying the bated breath all offseason and the excitement we fell right now is this simple fact: Johan Santana is the best pitcher in the big leagues, and once we get his mammoth contract worked out, he'll be a Met.

It's an extraordinary feeling. One I'm not quite sure I'm equipped to deal with just yet.

There hasn't been a day like this since the Mets acquired Mike Piazza. There was that awful day we traded Scott Kazmir -- that was the last trade we made on this level of magnitude. There was that glorious day we signed Pedro Martinez, but that's not really the same thing.

Sip's said it before, trading for a player and signing a free agent are markedly different phenomena. When you trade for somebody you give something up, something that's been important to you, something you've been excited about. Something is lost beyond Fred Wilpon's money, and it's something you cared about for some period of time. Because of your emotional involvement, you earn the player you acquire.

In that sense, the Mets earned Johan Santana. We talked about Carlos Gomez a goodly amount this year, marveling at his potential and his speed and his catch at the wall in Yankee Stadium.

Phil Humber was one of the kids who gave us hope after the Kazmir debacle.

Deolis Guerra has a ton of upside.

Kevin Mulvey went from obscure draft pick to our best pitching prospect in three months.

So we lost something, and in that sense we earned Johan Santana.

In another sense, however, the feeling I shared on Monday still prevails. "Say we're the Twins and we've got to trade Johan," I wrote Sunday night, "would we ever feel good about doing it for the package of prospects the Mets are offering?"

The feeling is the Mets stole this one. According to ESPN's SportsNation, ~90% of 33,000 respondents have said the Mets got the better end of the deal. In a different ESPN poll, 82.6% of 29,000 respondents said the Mets "stole" Johan from the Twins.

The data's interesting, but the point is this: ask any Mets fan if he'd have been OK trading Gomez, Humber, Guerra, and Mulvey for Johan Santana and every single one of them would have said yes.

And that's what counts. This is our team. This is the team we agonize about. This is the team we've rooted for our entire lives. This is the only baseball team we could ever care about.

And today, that team had a very good day.

Team to beat in the National League? I say it with absolute humility: I think we are.

- A.F.O.M.G.