A Thought Experiment, Part de Uno.

All this talk about what the Yankees supposedly can and cannot afford, and what the consequences would be for both, got me going on a little thought experiment—something we might as well consider, as the team's season goes swirling down the culverts in the Chicago rain.

What if Hal had done pretty much everything we (collectively) wanted over the last few years?

Sure, there were plenty of things we didn't all agree on, and plenty of bad moves we would've made on our own.  And I don't intend to get into what might have happened if we had signed Manny, or Bryce, or Corbin—too small a sample size, don'tcha know.

Let's say that Hal had done pretty much what we like to see in building a team.

Let's say, for instance, he had told Coops to go hard for Max Scherzer and sign him.

Let's say we outbid the Sox for Yoan Moncada, then flipped him for Chris Sale, just as Boston did.

Let's say Coops went after Justin Verlander instead of Sonny Gray down the stretch in 2017, and that we either found some way to pry Gerrit Cole from the Pirates, or convinced him to sign with us when we drafted him in the first place.

Let's say that we decided to pass on Ellsbury, a speed player getting long in the tooth, and that we bade a fond farewell to CC when his fastball went, 7 years ago.

Let's pretend we just snorted when Derek Jeter tried to tie a certain millstone around our neck, and insisted on a player who could actually play the field, instead—a player like Christian Yelich.

And not having committed all those doubloons to Giancarlo "Millstone" Stanton, let's say we went crazy as a bedbug and spent the money we saved outbidding Boston for J.D. Martinez, just for the shear spite of it?

What if we tried to build a team like that?

Well, as the old impressionists used to say, it might look something like this...