Prospects in Santana deal have lots of question marks

Carlos Gomez is the top prospect going to Minnesota for Johan Santana, but the Twins should have gotten more. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images Sport

RELATED • Baseball Prospectus: Analyzing the deal • FUNGOES: Hello, Johan • FUNGOES: Goodbye, Johan • RUMORS: Did the Twins get enough? • GALLERY: Decade's biggest trades • Deal in place to send Santana to Mets • Santana just latest to leave Twins

By Kevin Goldstein, BaseballProspectus.com

With the much-rumored Johan Santana deal finally going down, the Twins' prospect rankings are transformed significantly, so let's take a look at where the system stands now.

Five-Star Prospects

None

Four-Star Prospects

1. Carlos Gomez, CF

2. Deolis Guerra, RHP

3. Ben Revere, CF

Three-Star Prospects

4. Anthony Swarzak, RHP

5. Philip Humber, RHP

6. Jeff Manship, RHP

7. Tyler Robertson, LHP

8. Kevin Mulvey, RHP

9. Nick Blackburn, RHP

10. Brian Duensing, LHP

11. Trevor Plouffe, SS

So the Mets provided the Twins with their new top pair of prospects in the deal, but one of the big questions is, why wasn't it three? How the Twins dealt Santana to an organization with a bad minor league system without getting its top prospect is beyond me. For now, however, let's focus on what the Twins did get in return, and where they fit into the team's future plans.

Gomez is the top prospect here, but most of his ability is still bottled up in projection. The Mets were forced to bring him up last year due to injuries, which was a disservice to his development, as his long-term future would have been much better served by a year of consistent playing time in the majors to continue working on the many raw aspects of his game.

Gomez is now the best all-around athlete in the Twins system, surpassing Revere and outfielder Joe Benson, but what fans saw in New York was far more potential than production. Gomez's ceiling is tremendous, based solely on his athleticism. He's a plus-plus runner and an outstanding center fielder with a cannon arm. At the plate he should be a good hitter with gap power, but he needs to make significant changes in his approach in order to take advantage of his raw skills.

Gomez immediately enters the battle to fill Minnesota's wide-open center field job, actually bringing more experience and upside than any of the other prospect candidates  Jason Pridie and Denard Span  although Craig Monroe is on hand, in a box marked "break glass, in case of emergency." The good news is that Gomez instantly gives the Twins a new best candidate for the job. The bad news is that, once again, a full year in the minors would probably be best for him, especially in the long term.

Guerra is the pitching version of Gomez, only his age, level, and the fact that he's a pitcher create even more risk. Obviously, it takes a highly impressive talent to hold your own at high-A ball as an 18-year-old, but at the same time, Guerra was simply decent, not dominant. His low-90s fastball touches 95 mph and his body offers a ton of projection, but that's all Guerra really is  projection. His control and changeup are advanced for his age, but at the same time, he doesn't have a usable breaking ball yet, and he's had injury issues in each of his first two years, so he's yet to even throw 100 innings in a season. If he was an easy Top 50 prospect next year, I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, if he was not even up for consideration on the list next year, I wouldn't be surprised by that either.

After making an impressive return from Tommy John surgery in 2006, Humber took a big step backward last season, and nobody has a good explanation as to what happened. His fastball dropped from consistently in the low 90s to more of the 88-91 range, and his curveball went from a plus-plus pitch to merely above average. The third overall pick in the 2004 draft, scouts no longer see Humber as an above-average or even average starter in the big leagues; he now projects more as a solid back-end piece in a big-league rotation, and he'll compete for that job in spring training now that the Twins rotation suddenly has another opening.

While Mulvey had an impressive full-season debut at Double A, it's very difficult to find a scout who's anything more than lukewarm about his future. His velocity, slider and changeup or all average, though he has decent command. He's far more a guy who gets by on mixing his pitches, hitting his spots, depending on his defense, and keeping his team in the game than anything else. His projection is similar to, if not a little less than, Humber's, and he's probably a year away from reaching it, likely beginning the year at Triple A Rochester.

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