A great weekend briefly obscures the Jesus Montero fiasco

Yep. Fee-ASS-coe. For now, no other word - well, debacle? - describes it. In another era, somebody would get fired.

Hold your nose and look at the step-by-step way that we have assembled a mediocre rotation. Yes, it’s only April, but these winter moves look like the Lance Berkman trade on steroids.

1.   We sign Freddy Garcia for – OMG - $4 million. Thus far, a John Carter/Ishtar disaster. Money down the drain.

2.   We sign Hiroki Kuroda for – OMG - $10 million. Thus far, the reincarnation of AJ Burnett. Hot and cold. Not worth the money.

3.   We piss away a great young hitter and pitcher – Montero and Hector Noesi - for, well, right now… nothing. Nada. Zilch. A fat guy who threw hard last spring, and who may never be the same. Oh, and a Single A prospect! Golly Moses, Yankee blogosphere, let’s cheer his nightly performances at Charleston, as we did with the Killer Bees! Whoopteeedoooo!

4.   We give away AJ Burnett for – OMG – the $4 million we spent for Freddy Garcia. (Plus a plate of fried chicken.) Of course, we laughed when AJ hurt himself in a bunting drill – which wouldn’t have happened in Tampa. Thus, we don’t have to watch him excel in Pittsburgh. And we can always dust off the old “couldn’t pitch in the AL East” line, our all-purpose excuse for trades that barf.

Awww, it just gets worse. Bartolo Colon is throwing shutouts in Oakland. The Betances/Baneulos bus fell apart on the NYS Thruway. We’re signing scrapheap Figuroas – hey, is Sidney Ponson throwing? -  and in a few weeks, we went from seven starters to desperately needing Andy Pettitte – and it’s still a stretch to imagine him the same pitcher he was in 2010.

Listen: This season hinged on that Montero-Pineda trade being – at least – a fair deal. We didn’t need to take Seattle. We just needed a deal that helped both teams. Now, it’s a blowout. And with Pineda gone – and why should we feel hope? – mark it as a colossal fiasco, the biggest in the last 10 years. In another era, somebody would fry. I don’t want such a fate for Cashman. But it’s his legacy, and I wonder if it will ever recover.