Saturday, July 30, 2011

It's Cash-and-Trade Weekend, and the stench of defeat lingers upon our dealing fingers

Listen: You can recover from a broken heart, bankruptcy and teen acne. But you can never reclaim a loss to the Baltimore Orioles. It endures for eternity, like Betty White.

A home defeat to Baltimore - with Buck "I hate the Yankees" Showalter - brings the anguish of the entire trapped Chilean miners ordeal, without the happy ending. It meanders at the pace of a bad Meryl Streep movie, and nobody comes out unchanged. I went to bed crying last night, weeping the tears of unbridled Yankee shame, and now -- 12 hours later -- I still fear the nightmare spit-shower of news that could come at any time: 

We'll pull the trigger on some bad, horrible, decade-killing Yankee deal.

Please, God, no. Just send the meteor. Don't make us endure another Ken Phelps trade.

Listen: This was supposed to be a rebuilding year. We figured no staff based on Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia could take their team into October. We have exceeded expectations. But still, it's a rebuilding year. And if we dump our future into Ubaldo Jimenez (the next AJ Burnett) or somebody not yet on radar, everything will be wasted.

We have kept our farm system intact. Even though some kids flopped (Brackman) and others failed to have the breakout year we fantacized (Sanchez), we still have more top 50 upper-level prospects (Jesus, Banuelos, Betances, Romine) than any other team in baseball, and they are beginning to emerge in waves, as keys to the future (Robertson, Noesi, Nova, Gardner, Nunez...)

We went through the last 10 years trading our youth at the deadline, generally getting to the playoffs and then collapsing.

We can get there this year, without trading the farm. October is a crapshot. Who knows what pitchers will be hot, or what hitters will be slumping? Lance Berkman did nothing for us last year. And we gave up Mark Melancon to get him. Please, no. Stay the course.
 
Today is the toughest 24 hours of the year. And dammit, we better beat Baltimore.

Final note: Brett Gardner is starting to scare me. Is there something mental about leading off? He's a holy terror batting ninth. Batting first, he's Omar Moreno.

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