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"It doesn't make any sense for me to be here, you know?"
-- Twins ace Johan Santana, the day after the trading deadline

So what will become of the Best Pitcher in the Solar System? What will become of the great Johan Santana?

It is a question the baseball world has been pondering for months. It is a question the baseball world will keep on pondering as long as the Best Pitcher in the Solar System remains an employee of the Minnesota Twins.

They need to keep him. But can they possibly keep him?

They need to sign him. But can they possibly sign him?

They have always gotten the feeling that when Santana looked way out there into his future, beyond the end of his current contract after 2008, he saw himself still wearing that same blue cap, with the T and the C, on his head. But does he still?

He uttered those words -- "it doesn't make any sense for me to be here" -- two weeks ago. He has had chances to take them back, to spin them, to massage them any way he wished. Hasn't done it. In fact, Santana has made a point not to spin or massage anything.

So what will become of the great Johan Santana? What will the Twins do about him? What should they do about him? Is there any more fascinating question in baseball to contemplate than that?

We don't think so. So we posed that question to GMs or high-ranking officials of five different teams: What would you do if you were running the Twins? Trade this man? Sign him? Keep him and trade him later? Keep him and sign him later?

Not that the Twins have asked us for advice. But if they're interested, four of those five officials had nearly identical responses:

Sign him. Now. And if not now, the sooner the better.

"Sign him. Sign him. Sign him. Sign him," said one middle-market GM. "The longer they wait, the more the price tag just goes up. They really should have done this a year earlier. Then other things don't come into play. The [Barry] Zito contract. The [Mark] Buehrle contract. If you let it keep going, the market keeps changing."

The market never seems to get cheaper, either. That special one-day sale on No. 1 starters never seems to come around. Ever noticed that?

So it looks so clear-cut from the outside. How can the Twins not sign this man? What are they -- crazy?

But we know -- and every one of our panelists knows -- it's not that clear-cut. It's never that clear-cut. So let's take a look at all their options and all the other factors that complicate this monumental decision:

How many dollars will it take?
Let's see now. Barry Zito signed last winter for $18 million a year over seven years. He's a guy with 18 fewer wins and an ERA nearly a run and a half higher (1.45) than Santana's over the last four seasons.

Mark Buehrle signed last month for $14 million a year for four years -- a deal that swells to $15 million a year (and one extra season) if he gets traded. He's a guy with 14 fewer wins and an ERA more than a full run higher (1.05) than Santana's over the last four seasons.

So if that's what Zito and Buehrle are worth, what's Johan Santana worth? One large-market executive predicts he would be a $20-million-a-year man on the open market. But another large-market executive says he wouldn't be shocked if that estimate is low. Way low.

As in $25 million a year. For anywhere from five to seven years.

That is just one more reason the Twins can't afford to let him reach that open market.

Their role model on this should have been the Blue Jays, who signed their own Cy Young winner, Roy Halladay, in the spring of 2006. That contract was inked two seasons before he hit free agency -- and they got him for $13 million a year. But the Twins' chance to do a Halladay-esque deal expired last Opening Day. So this winter has to be the time. Doesn't it?

"You have to sign him as early as you can, because you'll get a better deal sooner, rather than later," said an official of one large-market team. "You don't want to wait too long and cause a [Carlos] Zambrano situation. The closer a guy gets to free agency, the more he thinks, 'Why should I sign now?' He could change agents. Anything can happen."

The case for signing him
You probably don't need an expert panel to explain this part. Johan Santana is the best pitcher alive. You shouldn't need a Ph.D in general managing to figure out the case for keeping him around.

Nevertheless, you might not have thought through every nuance.

"He'd be the guy I'd want to keep," said a large-market executive, "because that's the hardest thing in the sport to find. The hardest thing to sign or trade for is an ace. Even if you decide to trade him, the Yankees probably aren't going to trade Phil Hughes for him, right? So if you have a guy like this ... you need to focus on signing him.

"As I look at their club," said the same executive, "their entire strength is pitching. They have some very good offensive players, but they don't have a good offensive club. So preserving the strength of their pitching has to be their first priority."

Will that cost the Twins a few of the gazillion dollars in owner Carl Pohlad's money-market account? You bet. But before Pohlad, or anyone else, decides signing this guy is too expensive, he also needs to ask: What's the cost of not signing a player like Santana?

"He's the face of that franchise," said a large-market official. "He's their stability. They're going into a new stadium. They've got to sell tickets around something, and to me, it's got to be him. ... If they can't sign him, I think they'll have a real credibility hit. If they don't sign Santana, they could have a hard time selling season tickets in the new park."

The case for not signing him
OK, let's count up all the $20-million-a-year players in Twins history. There would be ... well, um, eh ... nobody. Obviously. Because they're the Twins.

Then again, let's be fair. As GM Terry Ryan constantly points out, the Twins haven't lost everybody over the years. They kept Kirby Puckett. They kept Brad Radke. They kept Kent Hrbek.

But those were different players, with different price stickers. In mostly different times. And now the Twins find themselves operating in a much more complex time -- for all kinds of reasons.

It's true they have a new ballpark coming in 2010. But how much money can one new park manufacture? However much it is, the Twins would need just about every one of those new-park dollars to keep all their stars working in the 612 area code.

They have Torii Hunter's free agency looming this winter. Then, next winter, would come Santana and closer Joe Nathan. ("How come nobody ever says a word about Nathan?" wonders one small-market GM.) And freedom for Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau would arrive two years after that.

"So they're in a tough spot," said a large-market executive. "They're getting to the point where they've got to make some big decisions. The worst thing they can do is let all those guys walk away and not get anything back. So to me, they've got to decide who they're going to be able to keep and then trade what they can't keep."

Everyone assumes Hunter is gone after this winter. And it's almost certainly too late to trade him. So the first player most of our panel would deal is Nathan -- even though, in the words of a small-market GM: "He's nearly as dominant as Santana in his own way. He's just more replaceable."

But that assumes the Twins can afford all of those other players -- starting with Santana. And after Santana's outburst last week, "you have to wonder how much the guy still wants to stay there," said a middle-market GM.

If he doesn't want to stay, and/or they can't afford him, our panelists agreed, the Twins need to figure that out early on this winter, so they know the ground rules for 2008. But those ground rules then would create even more complications.

Trade him now, trade him later or trade him never?
Let's say the Twins try their best to sign Santana this November -- and can't. Then what the heck should they do (besides screaming several expressions that would never make it past our editorial colorful-expression screeners)?

This is the one question our panelists were massively split on.

Let's start with the theory of one small-market GM who was the only official we polled to suggest the Twins do anything other than sign Santana.

This GM didn't say they shouldn't try to sign their ace, of course -- but he did guess Santana most likely won't be signable. Even if that's the case, though, the GM said the Twins should still keep him and try to win with him next year.

"They shouldn't trade him [this winter] because he's too good," the GM said. "The goal is to win, so they should go for it. If it doesn't work and they decide to trade him next year at the [trading] deadline, the return won't be much less next July than it would be this winter."

A middle-market GM agreed, saying: "A guy like that is never going to lose his value."

But that was far from the unanimous view.

"I still say they should try to sign him now," said a large-market official. "And if they think they can't, they should have moved him at [this year's] deadline. If they wait till next year to trade him, I think there would be a huge difference."

But hold on. Can they really trade him at all? An official of another large-market team had a whole different theory -- that a player in this position is barely tradeable.

"The only team that would trade for a Johan Santana is a team that truly thinks it can sign him," he said. "For a team to give up what they'd ask for, which would be a ton, it could only justify doing that if it can sign him. The Cardinals did that for years. They'd swoop in, trade for a guy and then sign him. They did it with [Jim] Edmonds. They did it with [Mark] McGwire. They did it with [Scott] Rolen. The difference is, Johan Santana could be looking at $25 million a year."

No matter how many dollar signs he's looking at, Santana's stature and earning power have left the Twins contemplating the most challenging off-field predicament in the history of their franchise (Non-Contraction Division).

"This is the first test this front office has had over something like this," said a middle-market GM. "With this whole group of players, they've always had arbitration control at least. They've never really been tested with a guy like this. The days of that team and the A's winning on a $30-million payroll like they did five years ago, they're over. A $90-million payroll is the middle of the pack now. Even $70 million is really hard to win with.

"So I don't envy Terry Ryan at all. He knows what he's got. What I don't know is what he's going to do."

And neither, we'd bet, does he. Fortunately, he has ESPN.com -- and five of his insightful colleagues -- around to advise him on what he ought do. Our advice is absolutely free, too. Too bad Johan Santana will cost slightly more than that.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com. His new book, "The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History," has been published by Triumph Books and is available in bookstores. Click here to order a copy.