I don't know where Harper buys his underwear - are there 5-star Saudi Arabian hotel gift shops in Jersey? - because when bidding on ace pitchers, nothing is ever described as "reasonable." (See Price, David.) As a general rule, I'm all for Hal Steinbrenner spending his hard
I say this claiming no insider baseball knowledge. Hell, I can't tell Mussina's knuckle curve from Dice-K's gyro ball, or pick out Brett Gardner's bare feet from a police lineup. (Though I bet I could identify Yogi's.) Still, I know human beings, having been one for more than 60 years. And if we sign Darvish before moving Ellsbury's dead-cat contract, I guarantee you that every GM in captivity will suddenly stop returning calls about The Chief, because one Iron Law remains intact among small market franchises:
When you get a chance to screw the Yankees, go for it!
Any real chance to sign Darvish depends on timing - and, frankly, time is not on our side. Unable to move Ellsbury at the winter meetings, Cashman now seems to be waiting for some 2018 contending team to lose an outfielder to a tweaked gonad or the #MeToo movement. Then he'll offer Ellsbury at half-price, with the Yankees picking up $10 million of his $21 million contract. That would give Cashman about $27 million to spend on the season, making Darvish a possibility.
So here's the dilemma: Cashman must find a buyer - who satisfies Ellsbury's no-trade clause - before Darvish calls the cards. In four weeks, pitchers and catchers report. Darvish probably wants to sign before Feb. 1. If there is any chance for Darvish, or any big free agent, this is the week Cashman must find a place for Ellsbury.
Last week was spent crunching arbitration numbers. This week is for moving Ellsbury. If he can't be traded, we must wait until spring training is underway, and by then, the big names will surely be gone.
The Yankees lost out on Geritt Cole because the Pirates, in the end, wanted to stuff it to NYC in a bidding war. They forgot that, without Boston in the mix, we don't give a shit what the Astros do. We don't need to beat Houston in the regular season - just in a seven-game series next October, a long long time from now in a galaxy far far away.
If we're actually looking at Darvish - or anybody, really - it means moving Ellsbury's contract first... which means... gulp... NOW.
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Gerrit Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his cap, and he called for his glove,
And he strove for an ERA 3.
With each pitch he tried to fiddle,
But he was no wonder fiddler he;
Oh there's none so rare, as can compare,
With Old Cole and his 4.3
Sweet
Very nice, John M.! And great points, Duque.
What no commentator seemed able to point out—save for the stable of geniuses assembled here—was that Gerrit Cole is exactly the sort of guy "small-market" grifting operations, uh, TEAMS like the Pirates love...unless there is something wrong with them.
Two more years under club control, relatively minor money...the prime time to start shopping Merry Old Cole was around the All-Star break, 2019.
Why not?
Well, because Pittsburgh is really, really afraid his arm is about to go—and based on the stats alone (like Duque, I claim no insider's knowledge of the game), it IS.
For Houston to give up what they did—maybe it was worth the gamble. What the Pirates wanted from the Yankees was NOT worth it. Much as I love to abuse Cashman, we have to give him his props for seeing that.
And meanwhile, a big piece on how Liverpool shocked the soccer world by upsetting something called Mansity.
Oh, sorry: Man City.
That makes it Soccer 8, Yankees 1.
Today the Times must have set some kind of record, relegating a full slate of local action—another in a 45-year series of traumatic Knicks fold-ups, a Rangers loss, and the Mets signing a (snicker, guffaw, giggle) "first baseman" in Adrian Gonzalez—to wire service stories.
You could get the same NYC sports coverage reading The Chronicle up in Goshen.
Looks like Yu is throwing a curveball...everyone can tell...
"Footie" is a thoroughly corrupt lowbrow European time waster. Nevertheless, socialist hipsters in Brooklyn...aka "thought leaders" to the NYTimes editorial board...pretend to like "footie" because it simply isn't popular in the good ol' US of A. "All the news that's fit for twits."
My aweful fear is that, unable to get a bite on Ellsberger from any rational GM in the universe, Cashbux will trade Gardy and create $12M of room.
Still better than trading Carrot Top, and whatever else somebody will demand.
A confession: I actually like soccer. From time to time. Much as I like seeing so many of those Olympic sports...once every 4 years.
'Ski-jumping! Wow! How do they get the cajones to do that? And crew! Boy, that's 90 seconds of solid entertainment!'
When I was a kid, I went to a public school so small, we couldn't even field an American football team. Instead, we played soccer. It was one of the few things we usually won at, in a league full of enormous, regional high schools.
All of it was pretty primitive back then, of course. The basic idea was to make a long throw-in to the general vicinity of the goal mouth, where our guys would try to subtly trip, kick, and push enough of their guys over until the ball ended up in the net. We kept the field as rocky and bare as possible, so that the other team, bleeding and lame, usually just gave up sometime in the second half.
Good times!
And hey, I had fun watching Pele when he came to play for the Cosmos, and drove Dick Young mad.
But international soccer today...aside from some of the World Cup, it just seems like a great big bore, devoid of character. Ads all over the uniforms, brand-new, cookie cutter stadiums replacing all the beloved old fields. But hey: more open racism than ever!
The Times oughta just try covering the home (baseball) team for a change.
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