WITHOUT A HITCH

Wow. It's official. Johan Santana will be a member of the 2008 New York Mets. The contract was finalized Friday, a couple of hours past the deadline the Twins and Santana agreed to. The physical was passed on Saturday, and there was nothing else standing in the way.

The contract guarantees Santana will be with the Mets through 2013, with an option for 2014. He will be paid $137.5 million over the six guaranteed years. As ridiculous as those numbers are, I sure am glad the Mets are paying it, and not another team.

I don't think we can underestimate in this whole process the role Santana's desire to pitch in New York, as well as the National League, played. It's one of those "which one of these doesn't belong" things - it was Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets. Maybe he would only go to the Mets.

I think the only question that remains is whether or not Santana needs an asterisk. I'm going to go with no, because maybe Omar Minaya acquisitions are immune to that sort of bad luck that we are used to from previous Mets transactions.

I haven't heard anything about an introduction to New York City, but I wouldn't be surprised if a press conference was held on Monday, the day after the Super Bowl - steal some headlines from the Giants. In the meantime, you can go ahead and buy a Johan Santana jersey on mlb.com, which is what you see here.