Today, we start trading the "Core Bore?"

Yesterday, the 10th inning was a waterboarding session. Bases loaded, one out, game on the line - no, season on the line. For a moment there, I actually started to think the Yankees could turn everything around, take 2-3 from San Francisco, bypass Detroit and Houston, and climb into the race. Then Brian McCann hit a first-pitch pop-up to short LF, ending my brief hallucination.

So much for that.

This morning, Ken Rosenthal is claiming the Yankees will trade El Chapo, and that the move is imminent. Nobody knows where Chapman will go, or what feast of future disappointments he'll bring. (That's the pessimist in me, which still holds sway.) But it better be more than Rookie Davis, who is pitching well (8-3, 2.68) for Cincinnati's Double A farm team, and Eric Jagielo, (7 HR, .220 at AA) who is still a former first round pick. As long as we receive more than we gave up, I guess you can say trading for the scourge of women and garage-doors was a positive transaction in the thick and stinky ledger of mediocrity.

If Rosenthal is right, let's hope it opens the floodgates. I want Aaron Judge playing RF in August, but that requires an opening. I want Gary Sanchez catching, and it too requires an opening. I want Luis Severino to get another shot, and that requires - well - actually nothing, because there are plenty of openings on this staff. Most of all, I want to see Hal "I'm Not Cheap" Steinbrenner's self-imposed contract deathbed period - in which I'm Not Cheap won't bid on anybody, until the money bloat clears, a timeline that currently extends through 2017 - to be crunched into the next three months. We cannot sit through another year tethered to the contractual whales of Tex, CC, A-Rod, Ellsbury, McCann, Headley, Gardy, etc. - the "Core Bore." It's house-cleaning time. Trading only El Chapo holds the strange tinge of settling on a scapegoat. If we're throwing in the towel - which is exactly what I hope we do - trading Chapman and keeping everyone else is more like throwing in the Kleenex.

A LH OF named Ben Gamel is hitting .300 in Scranton, now for the second year. He's 24. He has little power but decent speed. Is he going to die in Pennsylvania? Probably. Gamel is not the player I would clear a highway for, but I'll happily watch him in September and dream. The fact is, I'm tired of this team. I'm tired of veteran players - rented Yankees - who swing at the first pitch with the bases loaded and one out, with a season on the line. I don't mean to heap all my bile on McCann, but that's what he did, and we have a rising young catcher who needs MLB playing time. We don't need two more years of McCann... which is what we now face.

Yesterday's brutal loss reminded every Yankee fan in the world what this team isn't - a world champion. No more playing for third place. No more settling on scapegoats. There is nothing worse than a .500 Yankee team. That's what we are. It's time to put this dog down.