The Twins open the regular season tonight. Livan Hernandez, who has had a fine career but is no Johan Santana, is the opening night starter — and the Dome is sold out anyway.

The opener is the opener — the place is packed no matter if the starter is Santana, Brad Radke or Kyle Lohse. But it raises the question: What effect does Santana’s departure figure to have financially on the Twins?

“There was really no interest in signing Johan Santana at the (salary) level he had, other than three teams. One of them told me, ‘You know, he really doesn’t add to the bottom line — why am I even thinking about this?’ So that left only two teams.”

—Twins executive Jerry Bell, quoted in a Pioneer Press blog entry of March 1

An interesting three sentences there.

The first sentence may not be completely accurate. Santana’s criteria for waiving his no-trade clause certainly included his salary demands, but there was more to it than that.

The general manager of the Colorado Rockies told one of the Denver papers that he had looked into trading for Santana but quickly realized that Santana wanted an East Coast team that trained in Florida. It’s been widely reported, although not with such specific, on-the-record attribution, that both Seattle and Texas at least inquired about Santana.

Now, inquiring about Santana doesn’t mean that any of of those teams would have made the same contract that the Mets did. Considering how long the Mike Hampton-Denny Neagle contracts crippled the Rockies, it’s hard to believe the Rox in particular would do such a thing.

Still, the general parameters of what Santana sought were pretty well known, and that knowledge didn’t completely scare teams outside the New York-Boston nexus.

But what, exactly, does Santana bring to the bottom line? A business invests money in its operations because it expects to profit from that investment — whether it’s buying a new printing press or a veteran pitcher.

It seems reasonable to infer that the team that saw no addition to the bottom line from Santana was the Boston Red Sox. The Sawx sell out every home game; their cable outlet dominates the ratings in New England when it shows a Red Sox game; there’s not a whole lot of room for revenue growth.

For the Red Sox to increase their profits, they need to (a) maintain their revenue and (b) reduce costs. Santana might help with (a), would definitely hurt with (b).

As for the Twins: Santana had 15 home starts last season. The Twins drew more than 490,000 to those games, an average of almost 33,000. (Take out opening day, and the average falls under 32,000).