This is it, the baseball week that I most hate and fear

Be afraid. Be, like, very afraid. Crap the bed. Barf onto the windshield. Hide in the closet, make no sounds, and for Glyber Torres' sake, don't open the door, if somebody knocks. It's not Jeter. It's not Mo. It's the Yankadook - Lance Berkman, Alfonso Soriano, Billy Butler, it's - gulp - RUN, YOU BASTARD, RUN! - IT'S SONNY GRAY. It's the death knell to the once vaunted Yankee rebuilding strategy - (2016 to 2017, R.I.P.) - which lasted nearly one calendar year, before the Steinbrenners, - baseball's version of the House of Dolan - demanded a return to their annual 20 percent profit mediocrity. 

This is Yankee Hell Week, when terror fills the airwaves. You can feel it: The Yankees won last night, adding a 100 mg Viagra booster cap to their wild, Wild Card fantasies. With each victory, they will move closer to trading a trove of young prospects, players scouted by opposing teams for months. They will deal this package for the latest in a line of Brian Cashman's sexual fantasy dream stallions - another version of Jeff Weaver, Javier Vazquez, Nathan Eovaldi, et al - the "power arm" that, in Cashman's erection-crazy eyes, is always on the verge of Cy Young status - until he's not. Think of it this way: We just said goodbye to Michael Pineda for the final time. Now, we're about to trade for a new one.

The Yankees must always have a Pineda. It's in the rules.

Okay, I know what you're thinking: Why don't I trust the "baseball minds" on Cashman's staff. They certainly know more than I do, sitting here in my darkened closet, cringing beneath the dirty laundry, refusing to answer the phone. I have no grand insights into the future of Sonny Gray, beyond the price we will pay to get him. But when I think of the "baseball minds" running the Yankees, I must also ponder the goals of this organization: All you need do is watch a game from YES's center field camera and see the empty seats behind home plate, and you know this is not a well run franchise.

But I digress: Last year, the "baseball minds" had to make a decision on a kid named Ben Gamel, the 2016 International League Player of the Year. They didn't waste time. They traded Gamel to Seattle for a $15 bag of French Roast - because, of course, they were committed to Jacoby Ellsbury. Our "baseball minds" saw two players - Gamel and Ellsbury - and decided to go with the latter. Who signed off on that decision? I won't say the name, but I guarantee this: It's the same guy who will orchestrate a deal for Sonny Pineda. 

This March, as spring training wound down, the Yankees publicly floated the possibility that Aaron Judge would have to return to Scranton. That way, he would "play every day," rather than ride the bench. (We're hearing that now about Clint Frazier.) Judge was in a tough competition with Aaron Hicks, who also was having a great spring. When I look back on this, I wonder what the "baseball minds" were thinking: Apparently, they did not see a first-half MVP in right field. They saw a guy who would benefit from a bus trip back to the place where he hit well last year. They saw a guy who be so depressed and demoralized like so many other young guys before him - Frankie Cervelli, Mason Williams, Rob Refsnyder, et al - that it might have taken him two months to dig out of his season-opening slump. That's the Yankee way: Send the prospect packing, and always err on the side of the Todd Frazier or the Head Casely, and if the kid burns out in his second tour of Scranton, they can say, "See? We told you he couldn't hit. Our baseball minds were on it."

The Yankees spent the last 12 months touting their new commitment to youth. But that was just p.r. Now, we're entering Hell Week, the days before the trading deadline, and you can scan the rosters of Scranton and Trenton, and imagine the worst-case scenarios that will bring us another Nathan Eovaldi - that is, a pitcher who might be entering his prime, or who might be nearing his career pitch count, because he's already logged a lifetime of innings for another team.  

I realize the Yankees do not have enough positions on the field for the number of prospects they now have. But if we solve that "problem" by making Oakland an AL powerhouse for the next 10 years - while we dick around with another guy with New York issues, or a weariness in his elbow that has been too slight for him to mention - well - I can't take it. And for the next few days, I'm almost rooting for the Yankees to lose. Can you believe that? We might be better off if the Yankees simply blow a few. Is that horror or what? Now, excuse me, I've got to borrow deeper into the underwear.