The Very Dark Blue List

As Duque flies back from Norway (God, his arms are going to be tired...bada boom), I'm packing up to wing to Austria for a week. I get to watch tonight's opening game in Houston, at least, which should finish just in time for me to watch The Blacklist. If the Yankees had a guy like James Spader's character, we'd be in a lot better shape. We'd know everything the other teams were doing and planning, we could foil their nefarious schemes to win all of the championships that, rightfully, should be ours, and the woman we thought was George's daughter would actually be this guy's. Press conferences would certainly be more entertaining, to boot.

Sadly, we have no such inside man, and therefore don't have more information than the NSA on the sites David Ortiz used to visit to order his Mexican steroids. So we have to bumble our way into a makeshift infield, trade away promising young players for retreads, and always, always, always field the most expensive players over the best players.

I know I've defended Ichiro more than once as a still-valuable player if used properly, but even I know that the Yankees will not use him properly and, given that, his roster spot would likely be better filled by Zolio the Almonte. Roberts will underwhelm at second, we all know that, but we can also bet that he'll be down with injuries a good chunk of the year. I'm scared of thinking at all about third base. Or Tex's wrist. Or Beltran's wheels. Or Jacoby's fragile frame. Or Jeter's rickety ankle. Or Nova's inconsistency. Or Robertson's psyche. Or Pineda's pinata pitch.

The list goes on and on, and no black binder in the world is going to help when nature inevitably starts taking its course. What do you think we lose two out of three to the Houston Hapless?