It’s official.  The sun has set on Torii Hunter and the Minnesota Twins.  The 7-time Gold Glove winner will be leaving the not so friendly confines of the H.H.H. Metrodome in exchange for Edison Field in Sunny and traffic congested Anaheim California!  Some of the reactions in the blog-o-sphere have been negative towards Torii and the Twins for not making something happen.  A few thoughts:

• Torii’s new deal is rediculous.  His other suiters offered him 4 and 5 year deals in the 65-80 million dollar range.  The Angels came out of left field (yes, just like the movie) and swooped in with their 5 year contract worth 90 million.  This contract has an option for a 6th year and includes a NO TRADE CLAUSE! Wow!  He couldn’t turn that down….  Baseball is a very fickle business and afterall……he has to feed his family!  [somewhere Latrell Spreewell is sitting in his manion…..wondering what’s for dinner].
• The Twins are also not fools.  They were not about to budge from their 3 year, 40 million dollar deal.  Personally, I wish that they would have gone to 4 years and around 55 million.  That might have been a risk on their part but I am wondering if Torii would have been more inclined to stay with such a deal.
• This certainly made a splash in the free agent market….  Now guys like Mike Cameron, Andru Jones and even Aaron Rowand will certainly get their cash….
• I have little faith that we’ll have anybody decent patrolling the Dome next summer.  We might be able to make a trade for CoCo Crisp but….. he won’t be Torii.
• I also forsee the Twins dumping Santana this year (or even this offseason).  After all, Torii left and we won’t get anything more than a first round draft pick next year for him.  The Twins will likely learn from this mistake and make a monster trade to get prospects and sluggers for him.  After all, if we sign Santana we’ll still lose every 5th game byt he score of 2-1 or 3-2 due to our lack of production.