Did Cooperstown Cashman Just Take a Page from Canton Belichick's Playbook?

When I saw the story of the Russell Wilson trade yesterday, the first thing that flashed through my mind was that either Brian Cashman or Texas GM Jon Daniels had uncovered some obscure rule whereby one or both of their teams would benefit if they made that specific "trade".

The fact that the Atlanta Braves recently traded for Adrian Gonzalez and his $22,357,000 salary -- and then released him the same day they acquired him -- lets us know that things aren't always as they seem these days.

I've lived in New England long enough to have watched Bill Belichick do the same thing in the NFL for many, many years.  Belichick and his staff study every last line of the rule book and then exploit whatever they can find to their team's advantage while everyone else stands on the sidelines yelling "Cheater! Cheater!"

If this isn't some sort of trading sleight of hand, then I'm mystified as to why it needed to happen.  I went to a few Cactus League games in Arizona in 1999, the same year Garth Brooks played for the San Diego Padres in spring training.  We went to a Cubs-Padres game and, when Brooks came to the plate, the country music fans rose and stomped and hooted and hollered.  The Cubs pitcher proceed to groove some looping keg-league pitches to Brooks until he managed to smack a double.  Unless you were a Garth Brooks fan with a big white hat, a polished belt buckle, a lip full of dip, and a dolled-up tart on your arm, it wasn't all that much fun to watch.

Having seen it first hand, I'll say that if some creative rule twist isn't the reason the Russell Wilson trade happened, I'm voting for the "hubris" option presented by Duque in his post this morning.  More to the point, unless this benefits the Yanks due to some heretofore unnoticed rulebook fillip, I'm calling it a stupid and wasteful distraction.