It's safe to breathe. Take off your helmet. The air has oxygen.
The fires are out. The waters have receded. The earth has stopped moving, and those damned blaring trumpets in the sky have finally shut up. Nothing happened. We didn't steal Cole Hamels for a handful of magic Colter Beans. Nor did we did shoot ourselves in the Buhner.
Some will say we lost ground to Toronto. Big deal. It's Toronto. They're fighting to be above .500 Since when do we sit around, comparing ourselves to Toronto?
Here's why I'm breathing easier.
1. We didn't trade away the future.
2. Next month, or next year, if we want, we can still trade away the future. (But hey, that's in the future.)
3. We made a microscopic gain - improving our back-up 1B with a flier on Dustin Ackley. That's still more than Baltimore - our closest AL East competitor - accomplished.
4. If we don't get a wave of injuries, we should make the post-season. From there, anything can happen. And if we do get hit by injuries, screw you, juju gods. You were toying with us, and it doesn't matter what we did or didn't do at the deadline. We were always dead.
5. Nobody has really scrutinized the talent traded for the big names - Hamels, Cueto et al - but they didn't move cheaply. At one point, reportedly, we broke down and offered the shortstop, Mateo, to San Diego from Craig Kimbrell. Thank God they turned us down.
6. Someday, bloggers will cherry pick the prospects not traded and the deals not made, and make it sound like lost opportunities. So be it. Hindsight will always be 20-20. I'm still glad we stood pat. It's taken 20 years to rebuild the farm system. We're still not there. It's too early to start siphoning.
Onward.
Trading highly rated prospects for guys hitting something like .215 with 6 HR at this point in the season makes no sense. [Yes, those are Ackley's stats.} But trading prospects, who more often than not do not become above average players, for an ace starting pitcher when your team has Pineda on the DL, Nova with arm fatigue, Tanaka's elbow hanging by a loose thread, Sabathia one of the worse starters in the league, and Betances and that new closer whose name I can never remember showing signs of falling apart due to overwork is a different story.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't have got too upset about having Kimbrel or Chapman, which seemed like the best way to improve the team, but I'm not crying about our situation at all, and WTF, I'm growing to like these guys, and it would be fun to seel if any of the SWB and Trenton kids might make something of themselves. As for the new utilty infielder, he could only be an improvement on Garrett, but did Robbie the Ref suck that bad?
ReplyDeleteKimbrel would have been nice, and the kid SS whom everyone in the front office just loves (Matos) is still in A ball and 2 years away minimum. Yanks also offered to take some of SD's dead-wood off their hands as a sweetner, but those stupid Pods still said no. Well, screw 'em then because SD is not going anywhere and can keep their bloated payroll and decimated farm system to boot. What jerks. Yanks made a valiant try and a good offer. Looking to see what Severino can do; hey, maybe he can become to the 2015 Yanks what Mel became to the 1964 team. As foe Cash, BRAVO to him for standing by his studs (well, we hope they're studs eventually). Just amazed that clowns like Joel Sherman still rag on him for NOT trading away his farm system. Brian just cannot win with some of these morons.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a new day in the Yankeeverse and I'm having a blast. Thank you Yankees and thank you duque and your minions.
ReplyDeleteI am not a minion!!!
ReplyDeleteAlphonso, don't have your decoder ring yet?
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