The recent play of Twins second baseman Alexi Casilla has the team’s management looking like geniuses again.

After all, Minnesota gave up reliever and team barber J.C. Romero to the Angels for what appeared relatively nothing at the time.

This season Casilla has made the trade noteworthy and may add his name to the annals of Terry Ryan’s long list of stellar, under-the-radar moves.

The A.J. Pierzynski trade has received a lot of press throughout the last couple of years and rightfully so, but a lot of what Ryan did goes beyond that and dates back to the Chuck Knoblauch deal.

There the Twins gave up a player who didn’t want to play for the club any longer for four minor leaguers from the Yankees. Those players wound up to be Cristian Guzman, Eric Milton, Brian Buchanan and Danny Mota. Guzman and Milton became serviceable players, Guzman even became an All-Star in 2001. Buchanan was later traded to San Diego for shortstop Jason Bartlett.

A big part of the Twins having success with minor league players goes back to the scouting and Minnesota has some of the best in the business with Jim Rantz, the director of player development, and Mike Radcliff, vice-president of personnel. The work these men and others do in evaluating minor league talent has allowed the Twins to pull trades like the one they did before the season with Johan Santana.

The snap judgment of the deal was that Minnesota didn’t get enough in the trade, a fair point indeed when you trade away the best pitcher in baseball, but the deal is looking pretty sweet right now.

It’s far too early to label the deal a success or a steal for the Twins but Carlos Gomez has looked fairly good for his first full season at the major league level. Currently the center fielder is hitting .268 with five home runs and 26 RBIs and 18 stolen bases.

Santana is still the best pitcher in the game but has a 7-6 record with a 2.93 ERA. He gives his team a chance to win every time he starts, but the Mets are so screwed up they can’t win for Santana.

It looks like the Twins made the right deal even though it was the least popular at the time. Minnesota did its homework on the players and it continues to be savvy with trades.

Players like Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera were kicked around the rumor mill, of course never all together, but a deal for those players doesn’t appear as great as it did during the offseason.

Hughes is on the DL and went 0-4 with a 9.00 ERA in six starts. Kennedy is 0-3 with a 7.41 ERA and hasn’t pitched since May 27 because of an injury. Cabrera, the ready-made center fielder with a rising stock, has hit .252 with seven homers and 31 RBIs. (He’s a sore spot with me because I drafted him in my fantasy league and had to drop him since he’s been so down since last year’s .273, 73 RBI season.)

The Red Sox deal for Jacoby Ellsbury or Jon Lester and Coco Crisp sounded really sweet because it filled two needs for Minnesota. It would have been very tough for the Twins to trade Santana for just Ellsbury and the Crisp/Lester deal would have been good but Crisp’s contract only runs through 2009. Then Minnesota would have had a 29-year-old center fielder looking for a new, longer contract. Sound familiar?

As it stands, the Twins probably got the best deal possible by going to the Mets. Deolis Guerra is a 19-year-old pitcher who has a lot of potential and Minnesota has shown it can develop pitchers well in the minors with this year’s starting rotation. Kevin Mulvey and Phil Humber have struggled at Class AAA Rochester, but Mulvey is 22 and Humber is 25 and have time to work on their stuff.

First-year general manager Bill Smith doesn’t have the minor league scouting background like Ryan did, and will likely be judged by this deal for the rest of his career. But it appears he is following in the footsteps of Terry Ryan by continuing to rely on the minor league experts.