Yankeetorial: Imagine the screaming today if we had made the move so many of you wanted...

Oh, I can just hear it from the selective amnesiacs of the Post, the News, the bloggermeisters, Joel Sherman, Billy Madden, the geniuses, et al: How could the Yankees have made such a horrible deal!

Three weeks ago, much of the Yankverse howled for such a move: We had a chance to trade prospects for a proven ace, the former all-star known as Ubaldo Jiminez. Hell, we would dump Ivan Nova or Phil Hughes - what had they done for us lately? - and add Jesus Montero, plus Manny Baneulos and Dellin Betances. To get a star like Ubaldo, you needed to pay the price. Aces don't just come up for sale like this very often.

Cleveland bit. Yesterday, in the biggest series of their season, here is what they got from Ubaldo.

Nope, friends, that's not a Jimmie Reese photoshop. That's three innings, eight runs, which translated into an 8-7 loss. That's Cleveland's future, going down the Ubaldo drain. That's "Ubaldo," which is Clevelandese for "Herschel Walker."

But let's step back a moment and enter that Yankee Alternativerse. Let's imagine yesterday, with the deal having been made: Nova pitches seven shutout innings for Colorado, while we lose a blowout to the Twinkies. Do you think the Yankiverse would be howling? For starters, everybody would now claim to have opposed the deal. Secondly, everyone would obsess over about every base hit by every prospect we dealt. (Jesus would be in the majors now, catching for the Rockies.) For the next 10 years, every conversation about a trade - even ones we needed to make - would include angry references to Ubaldo. We would have our own Vietnam Syndrome. It would be Cashman's folly. He would be the guy who traded Jesus. I suspect he would not have survived with his job.

I have been accused of simply being a prospect hoarder, a fan who never wants trades made. That's not true. I just hate deadline deals, where the seller creates a bidding war. Most of all, I hate it when the Yankees make a move that is predicated on whatever the Redsocks have done. That's what bought us Kei Igawa, among others.

Imagine the screaming today in that alternative Yankiverse...