The Screw-up

Let's get a few things straight.

The Cliff Lee fiasco is a story yet to be told. What you saw happen was the last thing the Mariners wanted.

Luckily for Seattle, and unfortunately for the Yankees, Brian Cashman made the same kind of tactical, strategic and visceral errors that O'Bama, and whomever preceded him in the Office of the President, has committed in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon to be Yemen.

That is, we saw a willingness to invest valuable, irreplaceable resources based upon lies, with no viable expected return, and committed us to years of hopeless endeavor destined to bankrupt the team. Worse, there was no plan B, plan C or the dreaded plan D.

It was Jesus and a couple of acolytes for Lee but there was nothing in between.

The Mariners wanted a big bat, true. In response, we ponied up our version of the biggest bat of all; the one and only, out-sized Jesus.

Unfortunately, Jesus is daily being undressed throughout MLB as a fraud, though the Yankees still like to posit him as a " can't miss major league hitter." Thirty to forty HRs per year guaranteed, as a minimum. Sure, Brian, Can't miss.

As a sidebar; if this were true, wouldn't Jesus already be a Yankee?

And lovely noises are leaked by the vicious Yankee spin miesters in Tampa, New York and, yes, even D.C., to build the idea that his catching skills are improving. We all really believe he'll be the next Hall of Fame catcher, don't we?

The ugly truth is ; Seattle knows that Jesus is another, larger version of Jackson Melian. A South American ( Central?) version of Bam Bam Muelens. In other words, another Yankee prospect fraud whom we desperately want to dump for any real player.

Add to that prized plum some pitcher who has had three fair outings at Scranton, and a gimpy second baseman whom the Yankees won't need for 10 seasons, and you have a recipe for failure, if not laughter and bar room humor.

We used to get away with such. No longer.

If we had gotten Lee for that package, it would have been like a 2010 version of the Louisiana purchase for the NYY. Unfortunately, the vast pools of fools and idiots are no longer out there.

Combine that reality with an organized and growing innate hatred for the Yankees ( see America in world opinion ), and we now get flummoxed on every occasion.

I would have given them Joba. We could tout him as the next Mariano.

If we did that, we might have won last night.