The Time for Pitching Was Then

From the lost computer of HoraceClarke66...

It's an interesting thing about human events. Many people can't understand that if you don't do certain things at certain times...those times ain't comin' around again.  

You either stop the Nazis when they go into the Rhineland (sorry to get political for a moment), or you're gonna end up trying to stop them outside Paris. You start driving on the wrong side of the road, and you're going to end up unable to stop, even when you're the only people in the world still doing it (Looking at you, English.).  

The question raised and discussed so honestly here, is what do the Yankees do for pitching. It's a question that, as our Peerless Leader notes, makes him fling his arms (not his pants) in the air. As well it might.

Sure, the best answer to pitching is developing your own, great staff from the minors up. But since the Cashman Yankees have proven utterly unable to do anything of the sort, there is an alternative, which many teams have resorted to:  you shell out top dollar in order to at least get proven, veteran pitchers.

The Yankees had that chance. Over the last few years, through trades but mostly just for the money, they might well have snapped up:

Max Scherzer

Yu Darvish

Chris Sale

Justin Verlander

Pat Corbin

Dallas Keuchel

Among others. Any one of them, acquired at the right moment, could have pushed this Yankees team over the top and won them one, or two, or three, or maybe even four World Series.

But the Yankees turned down all these possibilities. Their genius GM, Brain Cashman, always had a better, cheaper alternative:  Sonny Gray, or J.A. Happ, or Jaime Garcia. Or The Little Sapling, James Paxton, for whom he had to surrender what now looks like a very promising young pitcher in the form of Justus Sheffield.

When it comes to identifying and inking that one, vital arm, Brian Cashman has a stunning record of failure, repeated over and over again, year after year, decade after decades. Which is why we are now down to exactly one possibility, Trevor Bauer. Who Cashie and his boss will pass up again.

The time to get more pitching was then. It's too late now to do anything but to get on the Marseilles train with a comical look on our faces because our insides have just been kicked out. Here's looking at you, Brain!