Sonny Gray is both the reason we need to trade for a starter... and the reason we shouldn't

When in history class, the subject comes to the great 2017 trade for Sonny Gray, the pro-Cashman theorists always utilize the "low bar of success" school of discourse: None of the three traded Yankee prospects - James Kaprielian, Jorge Mateo and Dustin Fowler - have done a whit. (Actually, Fowler is starting to hit - .244 - after a slow start.) Thus, it wasn't a horrible trade. (Note: This modified argument is also used to claim the Yankees "won" the Jesus Montero/Micheal Pineda deal.) Unfortunately, this overlooks one problem.

The Yankees have had to dick around with Sonny Gray.

In fact, we'll surely dick around with Sonny for another four months, maybe longer. He'll throw a halfway decent game, six innings and two runs, rousing the YES team to proclaim that he's figured it out! Then he'll get pasted... and for my money, that's the definition of dicking around. 

You can say the Yankees got more out of Pineda than Seattle did with Jesus, but it belies the fact that the Mariners noticed Montero's waistline and pitched him overboard, while the Yankees dicked around with the astonishingly erratic Pineda for four cruel years. 

So today, hours after Sonny couldn't last three innings against Boston, the Gammonites are calling for Cashman to trade Clint Frazier, Justus Sheffield, Miguel Andujar, et al, for another "power arm," (See Michael Fullmer) as Sonny and Big Mike were once described. At the same time, Gray stands as Exhibit A on why we shouldn't go that route: You get a guy who's thrown a zillion pitches for another team, and at age 28 he's ready for the glue factory. 

Here's a suggestion we all know won't come to pass: If the Yankees need pitching, how about trading Sonny Gray? Or shall we just keep dicking around?