After a decade of disappointment, the Yankees fire their top international scout

Yesterday, after Pirates ace Paul Skenes won the NL Cy Young Award, rumors popped that he secretly yearns to play for - gulp - the New York effing Yankees.  

And, of course, he will. Someday. 

Don't they all? 

Around 2040 (assuming that 3I/ATLAS comet now heading our way isn't an alien probe), when Skenes is 37, bald, crag-toothed and gout-toed, he surely will wind up in the Yankee rotation next to Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the cast of Yellowstone. 

But now? Nope. Notta gonna happen. For shits and giggles, let's imagine the package Brian Cashman would have to cobble together to land his ultimate Great White Whale - the reigning NL Cy Young. Here goes... 

1. Cam Schlittler. (The Pirates would demand him, full stop.) 

2. The Martian, Jasson Dominguez. (After all the hype, gone.)  

3. Spencer Jones, the tall CF (and maybe, the next Joey Gallo.) 

4. George Lombard Jr., the SS. (Our best position prospect.)  

5. Ben Rice. (At least one young and cheap, game-ready regular.)

6. A top below-radar prospect. (Pitcher Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz?)

7. Gobs of cash. (They are, after all, the Pirates.)  

A painful package, right? Well, here's the kicker: It would be beaten, easily and instantly, by the Dodgers, Mets, Redsocks, Phils, Jays, Tigers and half the contenders in baseball. The reason? They have explosive and successful international scouting systems, while the Yankees farm has percolated dregs for 20 years.

Which brings me to yesterday's firing. 

First, a disclaimer. I dunno shit about scouting. Neither do you. We sit on our pink brocade toilet seats in places currently under a foot of snow, and we study ERAs and Ks, and none of us could tell a Schlitter from a Benito Schlossolini. 

Nevertheless, you don't need to be a cow to know the milk is sour.

Yesterday, the Yankees canned their chief international scout, Danny Rowland, after 23 years. Rowland, 62, had overseen an ever-flushing urinal of a farm system, with a breathtaking array of failures. The list goes from Alexander Vargas ($2.5 million bonus), Brando Mayea ($4.3 million), Roderick Arias ($4 million), Mani Cedeno ($2.5 million), Hans Montero ($1.7 million) and the infamous class of 2014, when the Yankees strategically shot their wad ($12 million, far more than any other franchise) on seven teens, the most successful turning out to be Dermis Garcia, who eventually would hit .207 over 40 games with the 2022 Oakland A's.

I don't know if Rowland was a good scout in a bad system, or vice versa. His contract ran out, and the Yankees made a change. So be it. In this world, nobody aged 62 can ever know that crazy thing called "job security." (Wait, I take it back: There's Cashman and Boone, and everybody else.)

What I do know is that if Paul Skenes goes anywhere this winter, it will probably be to Los Angeles or Boston - some team destined to crush us in October. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe that ATLAS thingy will end civilization, in which case, we needn't worry about the rotation. For now, though, the Yankees are still the farm system of Dermis Garcia. 

Isn't that the galaxy we now inhabit?