Open Letter to Brian Cashman: Here's a pitcher who can solve all your problems

Dear Madam or Sir,

Sorry to hear about your losses. But I have the solution!

Meet Allan Burnett. He pitches for the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates. He is 8-2, and his ERA is 3.24. (Keep in mind that in his third outing of the year, he surrendered 12 earned runs in 2 innings. Some Oxford-educated mathematicians could probably figure out what his ERA would be if that game were eliminated; I'll simply state that if it were scrapped, RA Dickey wouldn't be a shoe-in to start the All-Star Game.)

Over his last 9 starts, Allan has given up only 14 runs. Jeepers. The guy must be pitching on bath salts!

By the way, here's a tidbit from the irony heap: We’re paying him $11.5 million this season, and $8.5 million next year. Last winter, we traded Allan for a bucket of fried chicken, days after we dealt Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi for a damaged plate of cole slaw. We did this for a worthy cause: So the Steinbrothers can save money. They'll "save" $5 million this year and $8 million next year. That is, unless you have to sign some expensive pitcher at the trade deadline. Good luck on that.

I should note that with the money we "saved" by trading Allan, we signed Raul Ibanez for $1.5 million. (We could have had Johnny Damon for less, but that's another story.) By my guess, that leaves $3.5 million "saved" by getting rid of Allan.

Come to think of it, we also "saved" money when we didn't sign Jorge Soler, the young Cuban outfielder. In fact, we've been "saving" gobs of money by not signing international free agents, or Roy Oswalt, or much of anybody - for that matter. (We did sign Jack Cust and Russell Branyan, but that's another story.) By letting teams we don't have to worry about - like Texas - sign them, we reduce the overhead and pass along big savings to everybody!

Now, don't take this the wrong way. You've done your job. We are leading the AL East. And there are a million different scenarios of where we would be if you hadn't traded Allan for a lap dance and a pack of Camels. But if you empty the farm system for Matt Garza or Zach Greinke or Marvin Gardens - anybody - and take on their Zsa Zsa Gabor-like salary needs - I just want it remembered that you had Allan all along - like Dorothy had the means to get back to Kansas - but you scrapped him because the Yankees - the wealthiest team in sports - wanted to be cheap. The billionaires were pretending to be millionaires, so we would feel sorry for them.

Do whatever you want. But I just want the Steinboys to remember what they did: We had everything we needed. We pissed it away. We wanted to "save" money.

Now... will we?