BigSm00th wrote:TMS wrote:give it up BigSmooth... we didn't trade for Javy Vazquez & sign Nick Johnson so we could be in a better position to win a championship... we would have been in much better position to do so had we just re-signed the guy who helped us win one last year named Johnny Damon.i guess if we had traded Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada & Andy Pettitte when they were rooks it would have been the narrow view too? please... sometimes u get trades right & sometimes u get them wrong... Cashman got the Javy trade wrong, not once, but twice.
LOL its too bad that Damon turned down the Yanks offer. I would've loved to have Damon back too, but he/Boras chose to turn down 2 yrs/$14 mil and went with $8 mil over a yr from Detroit. I'm confused as to why you think the Yanks spurned Damon. He turned their offer down.
"got the Javy trade wrong twice." Dude, Melky is hitting .256 with 2 HR and 15 RBI. We are really missing him badly!
And the point of that excerpt was that you use the 2nd tier prospects to shore up your weaknesses at the big league level (IE yanks giving up nothing special for Vasquez, who's numbers in June FYI are 3 starts, 21 IP (has gotten us to the 8th inning each time), 22K, 3 wins). The Yanks haven't traded prospects for impending free agents with Santana, Halladay, or even Sabathia on the Brewers, I don't see why they'd do it for Cliff Lee, especially when they gave up very little to get Vazquez and consequently, need no help pitching.
i get the argument that we shouldn't sacrifice top prospects for 1 year rentals... i'm in full agreement with that line of thinking... however, i think it's up to the scouting staff to determine which prospects are worth holding onto & which aren't... trading Jose Tabata away along with a couple other prospects for Xavier Nady & Damaso Marte was a huge price to pay... at the time I said for Jason Bay it would have been acceptable, but not for Xavier Nady & a situational lefty... yes, Marte excelled in the postseason last season, i have to give him huge props for doing so & i already have, but Nady was largely a non-factor for this team in his time here, much of which was spent on the DL... those types of players you should be able to acquire for lesser prospects, not your top rated prospects in your system... now there's Austin Jackson, who looks like a stud already in his rookie season... i'm not trying to act like i knew he would be a keeper, but i would have hoped the scouting staff might have had a better feel on the kid... Granderson can be a nice player when healthy, but so far this season he hasn't been & he's been struggling... I am in no way pulling the I Told You so card here, just calling things the way they seem right now, & right now it looks like the Tigers may have gotten the much better end of that trade... in time perhaps Granderson proves worthy of us giving away 1 of our top prospects in order to acquire, or perhaps he doesn't.
and again, this is not me bashing on Brian Cashman for being a bad GM... i still think he's the best GM in the game even though some people may not share in that point of view... but even the best are open to criticism when they make mistakes, & i'm not afraid to take him to task when i feel like he flubbed some offseason moves, & this past offseason IMO was one of his worst... instead of negotiating with the Damon camp this past summer, he set a line in the sand & said "this is what we're prepared to offer, take it or leave it"... Boras, in typical Boras fashion, overplayed his hand & demanded way more than the Yankees were prepared to offer... so basically this summer was all about Cashman trying to show Scott Boras he could fill the needs on the team without giving in to his demands, & Boras trying to show Cashman that he could get his client way more than the Yankees were prepared to offer... IMO, both of them failed miserably in their respective goals, & it could all have been easily avoided had either side just bent a little instead of us wasting $11M & a package of prospects on a .500 record #5 starter to pitch in the mid 5's as a 1 year rental... i would easily have preferred that $11M go towards signing a cheaper #5 starter & the rest going towards making a more attractive offer for the Damon camp to mull over & holding onto our prospects myself... not really sure why any of that seems unreasonable to some of y'all... it's not like Vazquez has done anything in his time here other than have a 1 month stint of pitching well in June... if he proves me wrong & tacks off another 8-10 wins this season & gets his ERA to mid 4's or lower, then maybe i'll rethink my stance on the guy in terms of his value compared to what we're paying him & what we gave up to acquire him, but right now i just don't think that's going to happen.
as to your point about trading away 2nd tier prospects to fill needs at the ML level... you can also accomplish that in free agency without giving up any prospects & saving money at the same time, which is what i was hoping they'd do this summer rather than trading for a guy who'd already proven he couldn't hack it in NY especially in big games his first time around... there were any number of cheaper options available to fill the #5 starter's role without us having to give up any prospects or shell out $11M this year in salary... btw, when we traded for Javy i don't seem to remember any of you guys vaunting him as a #5 pitching option.
