Sixth Night

Baseball’s off-season in some ways resembles Hannukah.

You get the good presents the first couple of nights and then the rest of eight days are filled with lesser acquisitions like socks or underwear, or things you find in the garage and quickly wrap in the comics section of the newspaper and try to fob off on whoever is coming by for yet another plate of potato pancakes.

We’ve already gotten Judge, Rodon, and Rizzo so it been very good so far. 

I especially liked the Rodon signing mostly because of this quote,  “ Astros-Yankees? I don’t watch. Who usually wins? I’m just here to kick ass.”  

We need more guys like that. We actually really need a manager like that, but we might have to wait until Shemini Atzeret. 

(I’ll save you from having to look that up – It’s a holiday that takes place generally in October. The implication is that we don’t win the World Series again and that would be an opportunity to fire Boone and replace him. Don’t feel bad. The only people who might have laughed are a handful of Orthodox Jews and they’re not reading this because it’s Shabbos.)

But I digress…

We even got back Scott Proctor, uh Tommy Kahnle, as a solid mid-week gift.

The Yankees are now in the sixth night.

No more good presents. 

All we can do is hope that UPS delivers a gift from an out of town relative that got held up during shipping. 

In other words, if we’re going to get anything really good it’s going to have to be through trades.

We all know what’s left to do. The real question is, “What’s right?”  

Obviously, none of us know what secret deal “The Ninja” has rattling around in his head but, as much as I am loathe to say it, because Josh Donaldson is currently my least favorite ballplayer, the deal for a left fielder is the more important one. 

My reasoning is that, if G-d forbid, Josh Donaldson ends up as our third baseman, we will at a minimum, get decent defense.

One caveat…

What can’t happen though, is having him bat anywhere near the middle of the order. 

Boone needs to "Tobor" him 

Clearly, we need a left handed left fielder who hits for contact. 

We keep reading that the Yankees still have something “Big” in the works. Then again, I also hear the Knicks are going to trade their draft picks for a superstar and then attract a top free agent so, you know…

Our best trade chip is Gleyber. He’s expendable as DJ (if not needed for third) and Oswald or is it Oswaldo, one of them anyway, would be great at second.

Can Gleyber plus someone like the suddenly expendable Schmidt bring back a quality left fielder? 

Look, as I said above, if all we got this year was Judge, Rodon, and Rizzo it's hard to complain but... We're really one star left fielder away from locking this thing down. I don't want to stat the season with Aaron Hicks or some retread. 

I've got enough socks.  What if we threw in Evan Fournier and Cam Reddish?

In the meantime, pass the applesauce.