New Year's resolutions................written for Brian Cashman

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I, myself, had a wonderful time as usual, even though the combo of two days of heavy eating, drinking, spiked egg nog, and some sort of Flahn my aunt made (I don't know how to spell it and I never want to eat it again) landed me home sick the day after. But there are worst days to be sick. Now I can play with all my gadgets and get myself ready to do it all over again next week for New Year's Eve. Oh yeah baby, get the stretch pants out this year cause daddy is all about expanding that spare tire before 2008 comes around.


But being home sick also allows me to do something else. It allows me to sit at home and write down Brian Cashman's New Year's resolutions. Cash doesn't strike me as a resolution kind of guy, but he does strike me as someone who loves a good list (it goes with the whole pocket protector nerd persona he's got going on). So I thought I would help the man out and make up a list of things Brian should be looking to do come this 2008 season.



Resolution 1: Brian will lose 210 pounds of muscle this year, referred to as Kyle Farnsworth.




Has anyone heard Cash and Joe Girardi talk about Kyle Farnsworth this offseason? You would think the king of sulk, the sultan of choke had, at one time, been a dominant relief pitcher. You would think there is some sort of "form" the man is destined to return to. You would think Cash and Girardi were eating the same crop of mushrooms together.


Farnsworth was a horrible signing from the onset. The man has always had trouble maintaining the constitution of his ball sack in the big moments. Even in years when he was pitching in the also ran league - the NL - and his ERA was respectable, you could never count on the guy to get any big outs. His tantalizing fastball gets up there in velocity but is straighter than Russel Crowe on testosterone pills. He is moody, unreliable, fragile both physically and mentally, and no one in that clubhouse seems to even want to share the same oxygen as him. But now, we are to believe that Farny is gonna step up and be a legit setup man after three miserable years trying to fill that role?


Here is your first resolution Brian: If someone comes to you and asks if you would like to dump Farnsworth and his salary for a sack of rotten apricots and The Dukes Of Hazzard movie, you say YES!!!!!! The amazing thing is that, last year, the Braves evidently offered to trade Cashman more than just rotten fruit and bad cinema for the menace of the middle innings. They were willing to eat some of his contract and trade the Yanks back Bob Wickman. The Yanks said no. They said no. I'll say it again: THEY SAID NO!!!!!!!!! So, in order for the New Year to get off on the right foot, Cashman must promise himself that, when someone walks in and offers you silver for goat shit, you take the silver, even if you wanted gold.



Resolution 2: Brian will have to promise himself that, when someone offers you a Bentley for a Pinto, you take the Bentley, even if you built the Pinto yourself.



Don't get me wrong, I like Phil Hughes, but if he is the only things, at this point, standing in the way of a Santana to the Yankees deal then I will personally kidnap the prick, throw him in a trunk, drive the 2,000 or so miles from here to Minnesota, and dump him on the side of the road.



Hughes is gonna be a very good pitcher. He could even be great. But will Hughes ever be far and away the best pitcher in the game? Maybe not. Will he ever be left handed? Nope. Will he ever win two Cy Youngs? Possibly, but there is no way to know.




What's the point of all those questions? Well, unless you can convince me, or anyone else, that Hughes will DEFINITELY be better than Johan Santana, then you have to make the deal.



See, I get the sense that Cashman is a stubborn nerd, more like Mr. Spock than Captain Kirk. He made Hughes what he is today. He cultivated the kid. He groomed him. He promoted him as the next Rocket Clemens (hopefully without a Mitchell Report in his future). You get the sense that, even though from a baseball standpoint it makes all the sense in the world to trade Santana for a proven, otherworldly pitcher who immediately put you on even footing with your arch rival (Red Sox) and makes you a favorite to win a title, Cashman is still hesitant because this is HIS guy. He has convinced himself that Hughes will be the best pitcher in the history of baseball, and you know that he has convinced himself that Santana could be a bust. It comes down to stubborness, it comes down to ego, and it is the dumb way to approach anything in life.



So Brian really needs to ask himself this question: what does it get you to KEEP Hughes over Johan Santana?



He is younger so he'll be pitching well after Santana (who is 8 years older than Hughes) has gone the way of the Mussina. This is true. Hughes is much younger. But Santana is still under 30 years old (he'll be 29 at the beginning of spring training). This is a pitcher who has never had arm or shoulder problems, is a legs power pitcher (putting less strain on the arm) and has the best changeup in baseball, meaning that when his velocity starts to go he should have enough to get guys out with his offspeed stuff.



The way pitchers and players in general keep their bodies in such great condition, there is absolutely NO question in my mind that you can get at least 6 or 7 more top of the line, Cy Young caliber years out of this guy. In that time, the Yanks SHOULD be able to develop another big pitcher or, at the very least, be able to bid on some other team's high item ticket pitcher.



Plus, remember that unless Hughes made a GIANT leap next year, in his first full year in the bigs, it would take him at least a year or two to really become a dominant presence. And then he would have to equal what you get out of Santana for it to have been a bad deal.

Resolution 3: I will start looking at resumes before giving people millions of dollars.

This resolution could have helped a few weeks ago, before Cashman, who seems utterly incapable of convincing himself that the best pitcher in baseball is worth the money, gave Latroy Hawkins $4 million for one year. Latroy Hawkins. I'll say that again: LATROY HAWKINS!!!!!!
Now, Latroy Hawkins was a shaky, at best, big game and big moment picther when he was decent. But the last four years have showed a steady decline. He hasn't pitched over 60 innings in that time. He has had an ERA around 4 each of those years. His hits to innings pitched are absurdly high. His strikeouts are insanely low (51 innings pitched last year, 29 strikeouts). And, again, he is STILL a bad big moment pitcher.

So, exactly what is the Hawkins signing suppose to do besides waste $4 million dollars of the Yankees?

Cashman has a tendency to ignore the resume of the person he is signing. He gave Farnsworth an insane deal base on his velocity. Think of that for a second. Kyle Farnsworth, argueably one of the worst Yankee signings in the last 10 years, is still on the team because he can throw hard. He was never durable. He was never capable in the big moment. EVERYONE knew he would implode, and he did. Yet Cashman gave the man his years, his money, and refused to dump his sorry excuse for a pitcher last year on some misguided notion that, because he throws hard, he will most certainly turn it around. Because, you know, if you throw hard, there is no chance you won't turn it around, right?

Now, I won't blame Cashman on Carl Pavano all that much because no one could know he would become more brittle than a rag doll right after signing his contract with the Yanks, but there must have been some warning signs there, right? I mean, not only was he brittle, he was a sullen, rotten s.o.b. from all reports and it was obvious he never wanted any part of the New York scene. Did no one do any research on the man? Did no one ask around? Again, if we are looking at resumes, did anyone call up for a reference?

It isn't just those guys however. Cashman traded for Kevin Brown, ignoring his career long struggle with injuries and assuming that he would keep himself healthy with the Yanks. He didn't. Cashman traded for Javier Vasquez based on possible talent, never once checking to see if his demeanor would translate to New York. It didn't.

So, in the coming year, Brian, your resolution must be to actually WATCH the players you are signing and trading for. Check up on them. Take a quick look at that resume bro. Because the majority of busts that have come under your tenure could have been predicted by a intellectually slow monkey with bad eyesight.

Resolution 4: I will stop whining about my new role with the Brother's Fredo in charge.

Seriously Brian, no one cares that Hank and Hal have usurped much of your power. In fact, if Cashman were smart, he would embrace this new Yankee heiarchy because it would allow him to go back to his old ways of blaming every bad move on the Steinbrenners ("hey, I didn't want that guy, but what am I suppose to do") and take credit for the moves that work. The truth is that, since Big George handed the reigns over the Cashman, it has been a mixed bag. Cash has done a WONDERFUL job of rebuilding the minor leagues, but has done a woeful job of building the teams bullpen, bench, and landing players that seem to mesh well. He has made numerous mistakes on pitchers, from Randy Johnson to Carl Pavano, to the uttely disasterous signing of Kei Igawa. He has saddled the team with guys like Farnsworth and now Hawkins, who will turn out to be an equally big bust, and while his attention to the farm system has been wonderful, his dogmatic adherence to keeping the pitchers and players down on that farm, even when the big teams needs their talents, has perhaps hampered the big clubs ability to win over the last few years.

If Cashman's role in the organization is scaled back a bit, that isn't a terrible thing. Cashman is a good GM, but he certainly isn't great, and he has never proven that he can build a winner all by himself. In fact, Cashman has only proven he can build somewhat odd fitting teams that don't do well in the playoffs. To me, that isn't a resume that demands he keep control of the entire organization.

Cash, you have a job with the best organization in the world, making boat loads of money. This year, stop mentioning how your role has changed. It sounds juvenile and it sounds like someone is setting up an excuse down the road when things go bad.

So What The F*CK Was That Worth? I a small glimpse at the Mitchell Report

It always amazes me how quickly people are willing to simply accept a mountain of shit someone else is willing to pile on top of them.

Take, for instance, the Mitchell Report, which not only led the sports news for the last week but was the lead story on the national news outlets on Thursday when it became available.

The Mitchell Reports is nearly two years in the making. At its head was a man who once brokered peace in Northern Ireland (something former Senator George Mitchell seems only too willing to remind everyone of any chance he gets) and a litany of high priced invesitgators and lawyers. The report cost, reportedly $20 million or more to complete. And, for all of that, what, exactly did we get?

We got shit, that's what we got. We got an embarrassment. George Mitchell should keep reminding us that he brokered peace in Northern Ireland because, looking at this report, it would be hard to believe he brokered peace between his older and younger daughters. I have never seen a more useless, more trivial, bigger waste of time, money, energy ever, in any venue. The Mitchell Report must go down in history as the worst example of invesitgation in recent memory.

First, let's look at what everyone wanted to see: the list. I don't care who you are or what your personal views are about the steroids era, everyone wanted to see whose names were on that list. EVERYONE. So, what did we get? There was not ONE name on that list, save perhaps Paul LoDuca, that none of us haven't heard before. Every single name on the list had been implicated previously. Every name on that list had been "found" by some other invesitgative body, whether that was the federal government or state officials. So, after 2 years and $20 million, George Mitchell and his invesitgators essentially just lifted his report from other sources.

Think of it in terms of school. Let's say someone asked you to put together a list of the most important battles of the Civil War and then give a detailed account of why they were so significant. Imagine you were given the entire year to do the report. Can you imagine the SIZE of the F you would find on your paper if, at the end of that time, you had simply copied the list of battles from two books and included THEIR explanation of why they were important? Can you imagine what your teacher/professor would say if you presented something that was COMPLETELY unoriginal, with not one imaginative or unique thought of you own included?

That's exactly what Mitchell just gave us. The most expensive plagarized book report ever. NONE of the information he gave in the report is new. There is nothing we already didn't know.

Now, let's look at this from the standpoint of what it tells us about the beginning of the steroid era in baseball, how it came about, how it was cultivated, how this "culture of drug use" came to being, and who the major players were. Well, I wish we could look at that aspect of the report, unfortunately it doesn't tell us ANYTHING about that. It is further evidence of how useless this report truly is. You would think that, even if the Mitchell Report was unable to put together an accurate, all encompassing list of players who used during the era, it would at least be able to shed some light on the era itself. Instead, it gives us a history of steriods in general, a history of drug use and durg use regulations in baseball, and some of the medical reprecussions of steroid use in baseball. Never, not once, does it shed light on how steroids in baseball got started (where did it originate, who were the major suppliers, who were the major users in the early years). We know NOTHING about how such a "culture" was created in baseball. We only know it existed.

Again, for a history analogy, it is like discussin World War II, and starting your discussion in 1944, only stating that "political actions taken before hand led to the war." Wow, that would really be glossing over a lot of information, wouldn't it? The same things here. Mitchell tells us that baseball created a culture of steroid use, and cultivated an atmosphere where it was accepted, but never once explains how or why that happened.

Buster Olney of ESPN.com, who has been critical of the report from the beginning, had the best take on the report I have seen yet, and he makes this point very eloquently when speaking about what the report failed to do (which is provide any important information whatsoever). Instead of some critical insight, we get cancelled checks and detailed accounts of how someone sent a text message to a clubbie trying to acquire some steroids, or how many times Roger Clemens was injected with HGH, or who approached whom about HGH use. That's all fine and good if one is trying to build a case against one individual. But when you are charged with creating a narrative on how steroid use permeated the baseball landscape and how it was allowed to grow under the noses of all involved without ever being detected or dealt with, tracing a paper trail for athletes who purchased the drugs is worthless. I don't need a detailed account of HOW Paul LoDuca got his steroids. I assumed they didn't just magical appear when he thought of them, or that a genie provided them when he wished it. Whether he was purchasing through a clubbie, through some scam dentist or health center in Puerto Rico, or whether he was purchasing them on some Website called HGH Plus, I assumed he took some sort of active role is acquiring his own drugs. How does that help my understanding of the steroid era?

Now, the question, in my mind, becomes "why is this report so incomplete and so narrow in its focus?" A lot of people have suggested that it would be foolish to think that Mitchell, who is on the board of directors for the Red Sox and a personal friend of Bud Selig, would ever overlook pertinent, important information because of those ties. By God, they remind us all, this man brokered peace in Northern Ireland (I don't know if you knew this or not. I did a little digging and it turns out to be somewhat true. Mitchell should really mention that part of his resume more, don't you think?). How could HE ever be swayed but such petty considerations?

I am not the man nor do I have access to his head. All I know is this. This report is light in two very important areas; its examination of the Commissioner's office and baseball's role in allowing this "culture" to exist, and any examination of steroid use outside of the predominently New York based steroid ring he had access to.

Let me take the second part first. I do believe that the players silence was a major impediment to Mitchell. It is clear that his inability to get players to go on record all but destroyed his ability to put a real report together. Yet, many people are willing to give Mitchell a pass because of this. "What did you want him to do" they say, "no one would talk to him." Well, first off, the question is, what the hell did the old man expect? Yeah, come on in as we ask you hard, incriminating questions that could be held against you in a court of law, and even if you deny the charges, since most of the accusations are first hand accounts of what happened not backed by any hard evidence, your name is still going to go on my list. Shocking no one wanted to talk to him.

Olney has a wonderful anticdote on how a couple of players were named by Radomski and were approached about the accusation. They denied the accusation. Yet, their names appeared in the report anyway. Matt Franco, who was named, is the perfect example of that. So, when we say that Mitchell's investigation was stymied by the players refusal to meet with him, where is the proof? As with much of the actual report, proof is hard to come by.

Second, where does it say that an investigation can only be successful if the people you suspect of doing wrong are willing to talk with you, or their friends are willing to give them up? That's really what Mitchell was expecting? He was truly counting on players lining up to give HIM a detailed account of how everything happened? Why would we need an investigator if that were the case? Isn't an investigation designed to uncover information that is hard to come by, or even hidden from public view? Isn't it suppose to DO the work, not rely on other people to fill in the blanks?

This isn't just obvious when looking at the lack of cooperation from the players. Mitchell would have had NO report without Radomski. Why didn't Mitchell and his investigators flush out a few more Radomskis to talk to, or at least to finger in the report? Wouldn't the report be more credible if he included the steroid dealings of a few more spots other than New York? One would think that Kirk Radomski, a clubbie for the Mets in the late 90's, invented steroids, yet we know players were using all the way back in the late 80's. The $20 million gang couldn't uncover ONE other supplier?

Mitchell expects us to simply gloss over his inefficient and sloppy investigating by admitting what we already know; Mitchell hasn't given a complete picture of what happened. It is as if Mitchell expects us to give him a pardon because he admits the investigation was harder than we thought. But, if you've taken a $20 million pay day, the investigation should have continued until a REAL report could be filed.

And in filing this report, Mitchell convientely slaps the hand of MLB officials and the Commish office, but seemingly stays away from laying any real blame at their feet. So, from the late 80's until now, a culture of steroid use was allowed to exist in baseball, but we have no evidence that Bud Selig of ANYONE else in MLB had a hand in allowing that to happen? None?

Newspaper accounts of the last several years have more details about this than the Mitchell Report. No where in the report does it address the fact that Selig has stated in the past that he didn't know steroids was a problem in baseball until after the 1998 season, yet there are records indicating Selig was talking to MLB officials about steroid use in baseball years before. Did Mitchell not know or see this? Did he investigate those claims and deem them unfounded? We have no idea because it isn't addressed.

How about the fact that it took Selig and baseball until 2006 to institute a REAL drug test? Were there meetings, dealings, back room discussions between and owners and the players discussing this matter? We have no idea reading the Mitchell report. We simply have the senator's assertion that ALL of baseball is to blame. I could have made a simliar claim two years ago without the benefit of a multimillion dollar investigation.

So why is the Commish office not taken to task, and why were so few "suppliers" investigated?

There are two possibilities. The first is that Mitchell simply didn't possess the skill to do a better job. Negotiating peace in Northern Ireland doesn't necessarily mean you are the best person to investigate an entire era of baseball and put it into context. In fact, a more legitimate option would have been to hand the money and the man power over to a biographer or documentary maker, who is used to researching complex, wide ranging issues and trying to put them into broad context. Mitchell approached this as a prosecutor and a politician, two things the report did not need. While the list of names was the hook, the meat of the report, the important legacy of the report was to be shedding a light on a 15 or 20 year period where steriods went from rare to common in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

Mitchell built a case against players named in the report, at time providing devastating evidence, at other times providing flimsy evidence that doesn't even pass the smell test (Brian Roberts is in the report because he TOLD someone he injected himself with steroids? How can a former prosecutor sleep at night knowing he has smeared someone's name forever off evidence like that?). But the "how" of one particular player getting steroids was simply useless in this situation. As said before, this wasn't a "case" against a player, this was an overview, or was suppose to be an overview, a history if you will, of what happened and how it happened.

As a politician, Mitchell understood that he needed something sensational to blind everyone to the flimsy job he had done, so he focused much of his attention on Roger Clemens. Clemens use is a MAJOR part of the Mitchell report. Why? He is one player? How does knowing Clemens used help us better understand steroid use in baseball? It doesn't, but without Clemens name, Mitchell simply has retred names and Andy Pettite, who seems to be guilty of using HGH twice when his elbow was about to fall off. Add Clemens to the mix, Mitchell knew, and no one will ask "how come you didn't do any digging of your own senator?"

The second reason Mitchell might not have looked harder at those two questions is because he didn't want to get any muddier than he already was.

Mitchell and Selig are friends. Sorry if I am a little skeptical that Selig and his cronies are barely mentioned as having a hand in this era of steriod use. They didn't know what was going on? They were incapable of stopping it when they found out? They had no dubious intentions in letting it continue? Money, and the resurrection of the sport didn't play a factor in MLB looking the other way for years? There's no evidence that they did look away?

Mitchell didn't include those tidbits because he didn't find any evidence to support those claims. However, he didn't find evidence because he didn't look for it. If I don't want my girlfriend to leave I'll tell her I couldn't find her keys. Of course, if I never look for the keys in the first place, I'm not technically lying, am I? I didn't find the keys. The fact that I didn't look for them doesn't need to be mentioned.

Only the most naive of us all would believe that Selig didn't know what was happening in his sport for years, and chose to look away. But Mitchell didn't talk about that in his report, either because he is incompetent or perfectly willing NOT to find that evidence; evidence that would certainly damage his friend's legacy and perhaps put his job in jeopardy.

The same applies to the list of players. Aside from Clemens, there are no surprising names on the list. Most of them are from New York. Did Mitchell really want to turn every stone over, especially in Boston, and find that a few current players on the Red Sox have been taking some Canseco bathroom breaks? Did he purposely set out to attack New York players, or hide information on current Red Sox players that may be juicing? I'm sure he didn't. Instead, I'm sure he was perfectly content to produce a thin list that doesn't implicate any major names currently in baseball and doesn't tarnish the team he works for. Could he have done a little more digging? I'm sure he could have. In fact, what kind of investigator would he be if THIS is all he could legitimately come up with? But Mitchell chose to produce a list, and a report, he could have put together a year and a half ago, just by simply cutting and pasting newspaper reports and including the information he was given by federal investigators. I have to believe it was what he preferred to do.

Roger Clemens has never been a likeable guy his possible use of steroids has been rumored for years. The other players on the list seem to be just as guilty, and it is hard to focus on anything other than the 80 or so named players who cheated the game of baseball. I have no sympathy for any of them (except, perhaps, the players who were named on such flimsy evidence as to make the most skeptical of us all wonder outloud what Mitchell was doing). This isn't about defending the players or defending steriod use. Those who bought from Radomski and used over a period of years deserve whatever they get as a result of this disclosure.

But that doesn't negate the fact that the Mitchell report has done nothing but provide the names of suspected steriod users who essentially bought from one supplier. It hasn't "caught" the vast majority of those who cheated the game and, in fact, may have let many of them off the hook because no other investigation of this magnitude will be launched. If you never crossed paths with Kirk Radomski, you can feel safe that your past steriod use will probably remain a secret for many, many years to come.

We don't know why steriod infiltrated baseball, or when it truly began, nor do we know why the major players in baseball (Bud Selig, Don Fehr) allowed it to fester for as long as it did. There are no substanative questions answered by the Mitchell report, and the names we received, for the most part, are old and outdated. This was, in many ways, a plagarized report, and for that Mitchell has been congratulated for his efforts. Instead, the Mitchell Report should be viewed as another example of baseball dropping the ball on this issue and should hold less water in the eyes of baseball fans across America than the next Jose Canseco tell-all should.

George Mitchell may have secured peace in Northern Ireland, but he certainly seemed off his game on this one.

A moment of reflection

I just needed to write a very quick post about this past week. You see, my 77 year old grandmother passed away on Monday from gallbladder cancer. She had been struggling with the terrible disease for more than a year and the fight just became too much for her body. It has been an utterly gutwrenching week for my family as my grandmother was our patriarch. She was a larger than life character that filled whatever room she found herself in.

For me, I had a very special, unique relationship with my grandmother. She fawned over me for my entire life, taking me on as more than just a grandson but a favored child of her own. She was my greatest advocate and, because of her youthful personality and her outgoing approach to life, became my dear, dear friend. While my peers spoke of their grandparents in detached, impersonal ways, my grandmother was like a second mother to me. She was there for me all through my 29 years on this earth and there was scarcely a week of my life where I did not see or talk to her at some point.

Because of that the loss I feel now is real and pronounced. It is more than just the loss of the person, it is everything that person came to be in your life. My grandmother was my security blanket. I could go to her with problems or ideas, or simply go to her to feel safe and removed from the real problems I was facing in my life. She never judged me or doubted me. She would have done anything for me, at any time. She had unconditional love for me.

The comfort of her house is gone. She no longer lives there. It is no longer a place of warmth and peace, as it has been for me throughout my entire life. The traditions that centered around her are gone. Christmas eve will forever be changed. Thanksgiving Day will be different and probably more hallow. Family get togethers, always facilitated by her and her complete love of family, will become more sporadic and may even become nonexistent over time. The life that I had known is over, with a new one about to begin that I cannot see through the haze of grief.

This blog has been about sports and my passion for it. I won't bore you with another "at times like these sports seems so insignificant" columns, but it is true that life falls more into perspective now than it perhaps ever did before. I have had to try and deal with my own emotions and then be there for my family (mostly my mother) who has been devastated by this whole process.

I don't know if anyone ever reads this. I have always thought this blog was more about me writing to myself than anything else. But I needed to share this with someone, even if it is being shouted into thin air.

My grandmother is dead and my life, in the course of only a few days, is completely changed.

GET ER DONE CASH-MAN!!!!!!!!

Just a very quick note on the whole Santana saga.........

The reports now are pretty mixed, as you would expect, but the consensus seems to be that the Yanks are holding firm that they will give up Hughes and Melky but not another "top" prospect. It doesn't seem as if the Twins are holding out to try and fleece the Yanks on Ian Kennedy. Rather, they seem to be fixated on either AAA pitcher A;an Horne or AA outfielder Austin Jackson. John Heyman was reporting that the Twins were also interested in AAA SS Alberto Gonzalez in the deal.

Now, here's the thing. I understand Brian Cashman's desire not to be completely and utterly fleeced on this deal. It doesn't make any sense to build up your farm system only to give it away for one player. But some of this smacks of Cashman not wanting to APPEAR to be giving in to the Twins demands, rather than really evaluating the talent being given away. If this is being held up because of Alberto Gonzalez, than Cashman needs to be brought out back and pistol whipped. If it's Alan Horne, well, to me, you can replace Alan Horne, who came on this year but hadn't been a HUGE prospect before hand, in the system so he shouldn't hold up the deal either. I would much rather keep Jackson because, to me, he seems like a very nice CF waiting to happen.

The point is this............the Yanks CANNOT let Santana go to the Red Sox. Like I said, I am not into the whole "give them whatever they want" thing, but letting Santana land with the Sox would be absolutely devastating. The Yanks have said they will go after Dan Haren if Santana falls through. Ummm...............alright. Haren is a really, really good pitcher, but he isn't at Santana's level, and he has only had one year (this year) where he pitched to a Cy Young caliber year (and had a very bad second half of the season). Plus, there is no guarantee that the Yanks would be able to get Haren. Considering his cost, more teams would probably be in the mix for him than are in for Santana right now. And word out of Oakland is that it would take basically the same bounty of players to extricate Haren from the A's as it would Johan from the Twins. Think about this nightmare scenario: Yanks say no go on giving up another good prospect. The Sox turn around and throw Buckholtz into the package and the Twins say yes. Santana is now wearing that shitty, ugly red and white. The Yanks then turn their attention to Haren. Because of how cost effective he is for the next three years a BUNCH of teams are in it for him. The Yanks, out of desparation now (the Sox have two legit aces to none for the Yanks) give up the prospects they wouldn't give up for Santana to get Haren, who comes to New York and is more of the near to over 4ERA guy he had been rather than the lights out guy he was for the first half of last year.

That's why, if I'm the Yanks, I throw in one more really good prospect (Alan Horne for instance) and say "final offer, we want to hear back by noon tomorrow or the deal is off." But they just CAN'T let this guy go to Boston. It is far more important for the Yanks to get him than the Sox. Far more. Step up Cashman and make the deal. Just keep being smart with your draft picks, maybe find a way to trade off a Giambi for some young prospects, and replenish what you gave up for Santana. It needs to be done.

New York Sports..........the Good, the Bad, the Knicks

Okay, let's start with the good...........

Reports from ESPN are that the Yanks are willing to add Phil Hughes to the deal for Johan Santana. Right now, the deal would be Hughes, Melky Cabrera, and another second tier prospect. It wouldn't shock me if the Yanks added a second, second tier prospect in just to get the deal done.

This is a good trade for the Yanks for a variety of reasons. First, Joba "The Hut" Chamberlain proved last year that he is the creamy filling in the oreo, not Hughes. I think Hughes can still be a very, very good pitcher with number 1 quality stuff, but I think Chamberlain has the chance to be special. He can be the next BIG TIME pitcher, the type of guy whose name trancends the sport, and he was such a HUGE plus for the Yanks last year, such a cult icon right off the bat, you can't trade him. He is the next big, Yankee homegrown player.

Hughes will be good, but, legitimately, how much better could he ever be than Santana? Chances are he will never be AS good. Santana is 28. He is a lefty. He has a career 1.17 ERA in Yankee Stadium. He has playoff experience and has good numbers in those situations. He's a strikeout pitcher. He's durable. He pitches with his legs, not his arm. He has a plus fastball but the best changeup in the game, meaning that, in 7 years, when the zip on the fastball has come off, he will be able to transition nicely into Pedro Martinez land where he just knows how to pitch. He is the best pitcher in the game today and there is little chance the future "best pitcher in the game" will become available. And, to top it all off, it appears the Red Sox are the second team in this race and the Yanks CANNOT let him go to the Red Sox. It would give them too much of an advantage in the pitching department.

What about Melky?

I have been a HUGE Melky fan; moreso than a lot of people. I love the kid and the energy he brings to the game, and I honestly believe he can be a very productive offensive player (not great but productive). However, Melky isn't good enough to hold a deal for the best pitcher in baseball. You have to be willing to let him go. The Yanks can sign an Aaron Rowand or even an Andruw Jones, or they can bring up Bret Gardner and let him play next year. There has been talk of moving Damon back to CF, which is move I would be against, but the point is there are options if you lose Melky. You can replace him. This isn't like losing Cano where his offense at the position would be almost impossible to replace. Melky just isn't that caliber of talent.

Plus, while the Yanks don't have a tremendous amount of top tier position player prospects, their BIG young guys all seem to be center fielders. Jose Tabata may move to left or right, but right now the teenage phenom is a center fielder. Austin Jackson is looking everyday like a Tori Hunter type of player, and is rocketing up the minor leagues. He is a center fielder. And Gardner is someone people ironically compare to a Aaron Rowand. He's a center fielder. They can replace Melky in house. It doesn't mean losing him won't hurt, but when you weigh the team with him or with Santana, it is by far more formidable with Santana.

If the Yanks can make this deal and convince Pettite to return, they are set. It would give them a rotation of Santana, Pettite, Wang, Chamberlain, Mussina with Ian Kennedy waiting in the wings as the sixth starter. It would be the best rotation in baseball and, I have to believe that, unless the Red Sox are ready to relinquish both Ellsbury AND Buckholtz (they haven't even considered either one right now) the Yanks will make this deal happen.

Now, let's talk about the bad...............

I have never been a big Eli Manning fan. I just never saw the talent a drunk, tripping Ernie Acorsi evidently saw. Everything about him screams "ahhhh". There's nothing special about him. But, I always thought that, given time, Eli would become a good QB. Maybe not a great one, but at least a good one. He might have a bad day, but most days would be good, and some days would be great. I thought that would be his eventual landing place.

It has been almost three full years; almost four years total now. Can anyone truthfully say that Eli has made ANY true strides towards getting better? Look at it this way; less than a year into his NFL career, what were the major, MAJOR criticisms of Eli? He threw too many interceptions: This year, he has thrown 16 TDs and thrown 15 INTS. He isn't consistent enough. This year, he has a passer rating of 75, up only slightly over his career average of 73.6. He overthrows WAY too many open receivers. He has a completion percentage of 58 this year, which is slightly up from his career average of 55. He tends to start off great and then fall off dramatically in the second half of the season. Starting with a "lucky" win over the horrid Miami Dolphins, Eli has gone two and two with three TD's and six INTS. He doesn't seem to inspire his team and his body language is almost always negative. During his last 4 INT game, Eli looked like a small child just scolded by his little league coach. There was no passion or fire, simply a downtroden young man who seems to only be playing football because it is expected of him.

The point is that, after nearly four years in the league and three years directly under center for every game, one has to ask themself whether Eli will ever become a bonafide QB in this league. Considering how aweful QBs are in this league today, Eli will never be expendable. There just aren't enough quality quarterbacks to justify moving Eli. But not being bad enough to be let go is very different than being good enough to help lead a team to a championship.

Here's what it comes down to; teams with mediocre QBs can win if they have exceptional players or talent at other positions. If the team has an incredible defense, they only need a QB who can manage a game and an offense. If a team has an amazing running back, they can win with a QB that just needs to keep a defense honest. But if a team doesn't have those elements, they need a QB that can LEAD the team to victory. That doesn't mean only a team with an elite QB can win. That would pretty much mean that only the Pats and the Colts could win each year. But you better have a QB the caliber of Big Ben or Drew Brees or Carson Palmer or Donovan McNabb in order to win, or an excptional athlete with an intagible quality like Vince Young to win. Eli is just another run-of-the-mill QB, another guy who, when thrown up against the Tony Romo's and Brett Favre's of the world, looks small and out of his league. The Giants aren't good enough to overcome that. They need more from Eli than simply "managing" a game. They need more than just an "average" quarterback. They need someone who can win a few games all by himself, when the other parts of the team aren't working. Eli hasn't shown he can do that, and in year four of his career you have to wonder whether he ever, ever will. I mean, exactly WHEN does he stop being a young, learning QB? Year seven? Year ten? is that about the time we can expect him to make the "leap"? How about this; if it hasn't happened yet, the chances are it won't ever happen. Four years is plenty of time to address what a player is. Eli Manning is average at best, with his terrible days outweighing his exceptional days.

One thing's for sure, anyone who wants to praise Ernie Acorsi for ANYTHING will have to explain how a man who prided himself on knowing QB talent EVER wrote that Eli could be better than his brother. That ship has definitely sailed a long time ago.

And now.............for the ugly.

You have bad teams, then you have joke teams. You have bad coaches, then you have joke coaches. You have perrenial losers then you have perrenial embarrassments. The New York Knicks are always the latter.

I have to admit that I found myself fascinated by the most recent Knicks 45 point loss to the Celtics. It just seemed to be a watershed moment. It seemed to be a moment in sports, and Knicks history that you would be able to point back to one day. In 2003 the Yanks were no-hit by a Houston Astros team who threw what seemed to be 50 pitchers at the Bronx Bombers to achieve the feat. It seemed even more embarrassing because it was a combination of pitchers rather than just one dominant performance. It was the watershed moment of the season, where the team turned it around and started playing inspired baseball afterwards.

But, after that Knicks game, there was no feeling that the team would, or could bounce back. They won the next night against a lowly Milwaukee Bucks team, but there was no true feeling that the team would turn around and play inspired basketball on a consistent basis. Instead, it felt like you were watching the bottom of what has been a bottomed out team for a while. Not only did the Knicks give up, they looked like they WANTED to give up from the onset. They looked disinterested. And their coach, Isiah Thomas, looked like a man just content to sit on the bench and watch his team implode, as if he were disconnected from all the shame of the moment. It seems as if Thomas believes he has no culpability in what is happening at the Garden these days.

The sad part of the whole thing is that there is almost no light at the end of the tunnel for Knicks fans. Thomas was not fired after the Celtics game, and every win seems to be some sort of repreive for the worst basketball administrator in the history of the game. Lose in embarrassing fashion to the Celtics on national television where your team is openly mocked? Don't worry, as long as your team wins its next game, you're in the clear. Have a few wins on the season? That's all that counts.

The truth is it does not appear that Thomas is going anywhere, and James Dolan doesn't appear close to selling the team, meaning he isn't going anywhere, and Stephon Marbury and his bloated contract and terrible attitude doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the collection of "I couldn't root for this team if I tried" players don't seem to be going anywhere. And the team seems destined to always have enough wins to keep them out of the top spot in the draft but never enough wins to have the team competing for anything other than jokes on radio.