Fantasy baseball: Yankees hoping Aroldis Chapman turns into Ray Rice, and Andrew Miller becomes Heathcliff Slocumb

Before wading into this dense and depressing digest of hope, let's acknowledge that rooting for this current Yankee franchise is like rooting for Time-Warner Cable: They already have your money, and though they say otherwise, they really don't care what you think. Some pock-faced accountant has calculated the Yankee payroll figure to ensure a six-games-above-.500 season, which puts them in the Wild Card chase at least through Sept. 15. Add a few jersey retirements, freebie-giveaways and home stands against our "arch rivals," and they'll sell 2.8 million tickets even if Alvaro Espinosa returns in an AARP-scooter to play SS. Why spend extra?

And yet, we sad, ridiculous fools continue to dream...

So, here goes...

Yesterday, the real Yankees - a/k/a the Los Angeles Dodgers - traded two top prospects to Cincinnati  for Aroldis Chapman, the Reds' star closer. Last night, that gold-plated stagecoach reverted back into a pumpkin, as MLB revealed it is investigating Chapman for treating his girlfriend like Holly Holm did Rhonda Rousey's supermodel cheekbones. (Actually, he didnt't hit her. He just allegedly fired bullets at her and choked her.)

The Dodgers can say, "Oh, well, boys will be boys!" or they can clip the deal and go back to market. Let's hope they choose the latter. Because one certain closer is a) better than Chapman, b) more fiscally positioned than Chapman, and c) being shopped around like pictures of Miley Cyrus' camel toe. The Yankees are taking offers for their best player, Andrew Miller, basically because they have nobody else of great consequence to trade. Yes, it's come to that. Our best hope is that Andrew Miller is the second coming of Heathcliff Slocumb.

Who is Heathcliff Slocumb? Well, he is the reason Joggie Cano sits in Seattle, assuring everybody that he loves, loves, lovvvvves the town, because he is condemned to spend eight more years in that miserable, nineties, spiritual hell hole, a place that even Courtney Love runs from. Also, Slocum is the reason why, in 2004, a cosmic switch flipped, and Boston became the Yankees of the AL East, as evidenced by its three World Championships in 11 years.

In mid-1997, the ever-cursed Mariners - chasing a world championship they will never, ever, ever see - traded Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe to Boston for Slocumb, a relief pitcher now remembered for a) the bad deal and b) his comic strip name. That deal boosted the Redsocks for the next eight years, and plunged Seattle into normalcy their downward spiral. But it was a trade deadline deal, the kind that the Yankees are usually on the wrong end of, as we chase our mirage Wild Card birth.

But... here we go! As Barney the Love Dinosaur would say, Let's use our imaginations! Could Chapman's sexytime exploits send LA into panic mode? If so, could we pry loose a Lowe and a Varitek from their well-regarded farm system? Because that's the level of Christmas miracle to which we've been reduced: We need a colossal, lopsided trade - no, we need a flat-out holiday steal. And that's Yankee hubris at its best. We think we're smarter than other teams. But the more trades you make, the more likely that one goes south and - poof - the Three-Year Cough turns into the 14-Year Barf. We are entering Year Four of the Whatever, and if anybody thinks this team - without a miracle deal - can beat Toronto and/or the new retooled Boston, you're either reading Bleacher Report on LSD, or you're waiting for Alviro Espinosa to come down the chimney. Hey, now that I think of it, reading Bleacher Report on LSD is not a bad idea. It might even make sense. (Aww, crap, why did I just waste 20 minutes writing about the Yankees when I should be hawking my book?)