Waiting for the cruel shoes to drop

Two more Yankee prospects vanished yesterday. So long, Dietrich Enns and Zack Littell. That's five gone in the last two weeks. The youth movement is officially over. Today, we'll probably jettison three more - maybe four. Our list of top 30 prospects now includes Cody Carroll, a 24-year-old middle innings reliever in Trenton. (Let that sink in: twenty-four, middle innings reliever, Double A.) By tomorrow, Cody could be in our top 25! Could Cito Culver be next? 

Oh, fukkit! Who cares! Certainly not the Wall Street Weekender from Westchester (WWW.) And I respect that. The world needs its hedge fund managers to be clearheaded to the task at hand - screwing dumb fuck pensioners - rather than analyzing the starting rotation in Trenton. The world doesn't need another Yankee obsessive - or as the Mooch would call me, "a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac" - blogging about the danger of trading Jorge Mateo. Nope. If the WWW simply knows that there used to be a player named "A-Rod," and he still thinks Derek Jeter is the Yankee shortstop - hey, no problem: That's China Town, Jake! Nobody has to care about the dearth of talent in the Pulaski outfield. And for those divinely uncaring WWWs, tonight's YES Network takeaway will surely be that the Yankees have obtained an all-star pitcher - Sonny Koufax! - in exchange for absolutely nothing. It was a gift from the good people of Oakland, whose franchise was once again outsmarted by that all-wise, big city operation, run by the crafty Hal Steinbrenner, the beacon of front office superiority. 

The Yankee farm system, bursting with talent two weeks ago, will soon return to the norm: Scranton again full of 26-year-old utility candidates. (FYI: Cito Culver homered last night!) Trenton will once again be the home of Chris Christie rather than Jorge Mateo. The Yankees will either win everything this fall - (actually, there are teams in Houston, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Washington that might have a say in this) - justifying the trades, or we will have pitched overboard our youth movement for - well, a one game wild card appearance? We may never see Billy McKinney or Justis Sheffield or Chance Adams, at least not in Yankee uniforms. And what happens over the next three months will still depend entirely on injuries and slumps; Aaron Judge, Jordan Montgomery and Clint Frazier are still defining themselves, and somewhere out there, a tweaked gonad is waiting for us. It's the long game that really matters, and in the last few days, we quit playing it. The WWWs don't know, and they don't give a shit. Only fools that the Mooch would fire - idiots, like us - would ever bother to be concerned about 2019.

The way to build dynasties is to be like the New England Patriots, who are always stashing extra draft picks, always supplementing a core of stars with emerging young talent. This year, we began that way. We developed Aaron Judge, Jordan Montgomery, Luis Severino, Aaron Hicks and maybe Clint Frazier. (But Greg Bird, Tyler Austin and a bunch of young pitchers - Kaprielian, Heller, Gallegos, et al - went south.) Next year, we will see - hmmm - well, lemme get back to you on that. Next year, we may be watching ex-Yankees on the White Sox, Twins and A's, and we'll be thinking of how we had Todd Frazier, David Robertson and Jaime Garcia. Next year, we can watch other teams unveil talent, while Culver dazzles us with his newfound stroke. As for the Wall Street Weekenders from Westchester? Well, there will always be more prospects to trade for established stars, you know - more Todds and Jaimes. Todds and Jaimes. Todds and Jaimes. Todds and Jaimes... I guess that sums it up.

I happen to believe that by trying to win everything now, right now, we piss away the chance to build a dynasty down the road. Wasn't that's what the Yankees were supposed to do... back before we sold our souls to the weekenders from Westchester? Oh, forget it. Nobody listens to a paranoiac.