Grease rises: Yankee front office brass to promote from within

Today's scuttlebutt - (beyond the news that Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger's old squeeze, is dating Rupert Murdoch) - says the Yankees will replace front office lug nut Billy Eppler - who ran off to run the Angels - with Tim Naehring, a former Redsock infielder, who has been a Yankee scout since 2007. If it's true, Naehring would effectively become Brian Cashman's second-in-command - though not necessarily his future successor. Both men are 48, which leaves Naehring with nowhere to go, generationally, unless Cashman retires early, or the ropes give out while he's rappelling down that building in December for charity.

First off... let's state the obvious: I hate it, hate it, when the Yankees bring in people whose names I will never, ever, learn to spell. I think they do it on purpose. They sit around and say, "Ha! I got it: Doug Mientiewicz!" We've replaced Epper - easy to spell - with a guy with two needless letters smack in the center of his name. They hate us.

To me, this guy is Narring. Deal with it.

Aside from that, what else can we say? Narring supposedly helped engineer the Didi Gregorious trade, the best deal Cashman has made in this century. Still, I was hoping the loss of Eppler - said to be Cashman's heir apparent - would spur the Yankees to go outside the organization for suited talent.

Year in and year out, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants seem to do almost everything right. It would be nice to poach somebody - to bring in a new guy and shake things up. The Yankees won't officially name Narring until they've finished restructuring the front office. Let's hope that means some fresh faces. And let's keep our fingers crossed that Narring has another Didi in his sights.