Yankee post-meetings victory cry: We still haven't done anything incredibly, super-humanly stupid

This week, the Winter Meetings came and went, and - aside from new jokes about "rectal hydration" - not much changed. The Evil Empire looked like a third-place team coming in - (Thank you, Toronto and Tampa) - and it looks like a third-place team now.

But instead of carping about our failure to add some new dinosaur to the ark - (The loudest ho-hum in Yankee history will follow news that we re-signed Chase Headley) - let's celebrate the facts that:

a) It's still mid-December.
b) Boston didn't sign Jon Lester.
c) All we lost was Antoan Richardson.
d) Yankee beat-writers are actually more credible than Rolling Stone.
d) The team hasn't done anything incredibly, awesomely stupid.

Not yet, anyway.

By "incredibly, awesomely stupid," I'm referring to the kind of trades that putrefied the 1980s - the Drabek-Rhoden or the Buhner-Phelps - the impulse deal that shrieks incompetence from the moment it's announced. Frankly, I feared Thrift Shop Hal Steinbrenner would be genetically drawn into trading the next Millennium for Troy Tulowitksi - an aging SS with bad hips and Colorado-enhanced batting numbers. Well, it didn't happen. Not yet, anyway. We can argue about Didi Gregorius vs Shane Greene until opening day, but the truth is, we dealt a 26-year old for a 24-year old. Overnight, we didn't wrinkle like Dorian Gray's complexion, and I'll take that as a victory.

Last December, the Yanks "won" the Winter Meetings. They signed three big name walruses. The victory party lasted about a week. Then folks started questioning why we'd give Carlos Beltran a three-year deal, and then we let Robby Cano walk out the door. Ever since, it's been a painful, gradual downhill descent.

Two years out of the playoffs, and counting...

And we look like a third-place team.

Well... the possibility exists that we did do something incredibly, super-humanly stupid: We exchanged a stopper (Andrew Miller) who's never pitched in NYC for one (David Robertson) who excelled. Time will tell. Boston seems to have "won" the 2014 Winter Meetings. Funny things happen when Boston starts celebrating with snow still on the ground. Anybody want to make a Carl Crawford joke about rectal hydration?*

*(If you think about it, rectal hydration is not only a method of enhanced interrogation, but of enhanced irrigation.)