If you want to search through the BP archives I think you'll find everyone of the "BP People" who commented on the trade expressed similar thoughts. But, yes, I'm a Yankees fan. And, like many Yankees fans, I was (and still am) conflicted over the way this played out. But, it's of sufficient relevance that I think it deserved mention.

Somewhat strange to see no mention of the bewildering decision by the Mariners to walk away, at the last minute, from a Lee-to-the-Yankees deal for a package involving Montero; to trade him to the Rangers because Texas made...Justin Smoak available? Really? Justin Smoak? It seemed weird at the time and no less strange now.

Thome ended the game with a soft fly to...the "other" right field. The one Gardner plays.

Mauer didn't hit the ball to Cano, he hit it right back at Rivera. Just sayin'.

(1) What makes you think the Yankees will be opening the playoffs at home? That's still very much up in the air. (2)Hughes has been significantly more effective away from Yankees Stadium this year. Not at all clear to me that the Yankees would maneuver their rotation to get him a home start.

Here's one Yankees fan who is just fine with that comment. I suspect it's Mariners fans who will find every mention of Montero increasingly annoying as time marches on.

I agree with Ken about implementing review as fast and as completely as the technology will allow. I, however, am in favor of structuring the review as the NHL does it. Centralize the whole process in one room, and for the love of GOD take the review process completely away from any menber of the umpires union. The NHL uses League officials for this and so should baseball. Yes, unlike hockey which just reviews goal/no goal situations, there are occasions where the "reviewing authority" will need to know the "why" of a call. Was the baserunner called out because he was tagged or because he ran out of the baseline? The umpire is supposed to indicate such things but... The system won't be perfect? Hell, it won't be close to perfect. But it will be better than what we have now. I am a "replay fundamentalist". I want as much responsibility for deciding close calls taken out of the hands of on-field officials (all sports) at the earliest feasible time.

I'd be happy to compare Giambi's "treatment" to that of Pettitte if you (Will) would tell me what you think Giambi's treatment consisted of. First, treatment by whom? Media? Fans? Teammates? Who are we talking about? I'm a Yankees fan, living in NY, and Giambi's treatment from fans and teammates seemed to change not at all. He remained extremely popular in the clubhouse and his popularity amongst the fans waxed and waned with his on-the-field performance (as per usual). His treatment from the "beat" guys seemed a trifle more reserved, but nothing dramatic. Really, I still don't see a point here.

I give up, what is the nature of "the pass" you're stunned that Pettitte is receiving? What does it look like? What should it look like? Who, in a similar situation, has not received such a pass?

"Truly, the world has changed." No, really, it hasn't changed. The Yankees have been relentlessly conservative and relentlessly patient with their players returning from injury. If you have examples of the Yankees "rushing" players back from injury which, arguably, led to their being re-injured...feel free to list those. That you could put this out there, without support, as though it's the "conventional wisdom" throughout baseball...puzzling. Where is this coming from?

Is James Shields on your Fantasy team? What do his recent (strong) outings have to do with UTK?

With Bret Gardner running, it wasn't a routine ground ball.

"Since SINGING for a $1.1million bonus...[Dustin Hood]." Singing? Talk about your toolsy prospects.

Frankly, as a decades-long horseplayer, I had some difficulty working my way past the third paragraph. You seem to be saying that someone is offering 10-1 odds on a 1-1 proposition, and if accepting this wager I would, in the long run, come out "slightly ahead." Slightly ahead? Slightly? In the long run I would own Planet Earth. The whole enchilada. You would all be working for me. And I would be a very stern master. Very...stern.

"...even if the current economic environment persists." What if it gets worse? What if it gets A LOT worse? What then?

Genuinely strange to realize Kahrl was BP's "Editor-In-Chief". Whenever reading CK my dominant reaction is "This indiviual would benefit greatly from some serious editing". One word, Kahrl. No, not "plastics"...pithy. Pithy is your friend.

Melky Cabrera has been "...long on hype..."? Really? Where? And from whom?

Not exactly sure what the Alomar portion of this piece is trying to say. It seems like, because Alomar has credentials which place him in the average range of previous inductees at his position, it's some sort of injustice if he doesn't get in the first time around? Is that it? Did the other guys in that average range make it their first time around? Their third? Fifth? Seventh? What's so special about Alomar that he has to get in right away? Don't see it.

Did Cashman have a choice between Burnett and Lackey? I must have had my head turned at the wrong moment.

Another Kyle Drabek skeptic here. Six feet tall, 185 pounds. TJ in his background. I don't see it. I asked once before at BP for the names of pitchers who had TJ prior to reaching the Majors who went on to have substantial careers AS STARTERS in the Majors. I got two names back, David Wells and Kenny Rogers. Both lefties; both physically much bigger men. Anyone have what they think is an optimistic comp for Drabek which takes the stature/TJ aspects into account? From here...I don't see it.

To be fair to Will, if memory serves he was the first member of the (more or less) MSM to bring the work of Bill James to the general public. And, now that I think of it, that alone probably makes him over-qualified for this group.

I know that for awhile there, SWB was running Ramiro Pena out there in CF trying to make him more of an overall "Utility Guy" than merely a reserve INF Guy.

An additional complication is that Halladay, with his full no-trade, has it within his power to pretty much reduce it to a "one-suitor" negotiation. I think the no-trade complicates the Blue Jays' position a big bunch.

OK, here's my eternal quibble with the line of reasoning presented here. As things stand now, if the Jays don't trade Halladay at any point this season, they'll likely get the 2 draft picks AND...AND...they'll have received the benefit of an additional year of service from one of the short handful of best pitchers in baseball. I don't know how to value that alongside the value of unnamed, presumably, high quality prospects but it's got to be worth SOMETHING, right? I mean, doesn't the value of having Roy Halladay on your team for the 2010 season have to be factored into this equation? Is there an obvious flaw in this reasoning? Tell me.

While the Jeter/Rivera thing could play out in any number of ways, I think the single most likely scenario has them both back in the Bronx in 2011 while making every bit of the $37 million they make in 2010. No savings to be found there, I think.

Sheehan is a Yankees fan. Who cares? I know lots of Yankees fans who are relentlessly wrong about a lot of things. The Red Sox are a very successful organization in their own right. They certainly are, they just aren't the BEST organization. They clearly are not that.

"When I look at the Red Sox, I see the best organization in baseball..." Do you see dead people, too? Let's see, in the aughts the Yankees won significantly more games and made a lot more money...but the Red Sox have the best organization? No, they don't. But, but...aren't there better measures than games won and money made? There are certainly other measures, but there are no better measures. The only thing bringing in other measures does is it allows you to introduce an enormous amount of subjectivity into a question which has a very simple and obvious answer.

I get a kick out of Sheehan when he goes into his "How many times do I have to express the same damn opinion before it SETTLES an issue?" mode. To a less sympathetic reader this is also known as the "Pompous Windbag" mode.

As a Yankees fan I'm pretty much on board with everything Joe says about Girardi's decision-making in this game. Still, even in their totality I don't think they cost the Yankees the game. As has become common in the post-season, we just don't hit (HRs notwithstanding). Following Posada's tying HR in the 8th, I don't think there was a single well struck ball the rest of the game. Not a one. No answers here. Just an observation.

Yeah, I'm thinking "provocative" as well. Especially since, if memory serves, Joe is the guy at BP who has argued that Jeter isn't anything special in the post-season because his numbers in October/November are similar to the April-September ones. And I was the guy who wondered whether maintaining the same level of production against broadly superior competition didn't, in fact, represent a raise in level of play. Is Sheehan beginning to come around on this point? Inquiring minds want to know.

Actually, on the non-Molina days (which will be what confronts Weaver if he pitches Game 3) the Yankees present 7, not 6, left-handed hitters. The only "one-way" righties are Jeter and ARod. They'll play 4 switch-hitters (Teixeira, Posada, Swisher and Cabrera), and 3 lefties (Damon, Matsui and Cano).

It's only a matter of time until baseball goes to expanded use of replay. When they do, I hope they copy the NHL where a centralized facilty monitors all games and makes all decisions The hide-the-salami, let's go under the hood method the NFL employs is just awful. The "challenge" regime is likewise awful and should not be considered in any format. Concerns about lengthening games (legitimate, I believe) might be addressed by getting the pitchers to just THROW THE DAMN BALL, already.

"The stage was set for a quick move to a right-hander..."? What would that have accomplished? OK, ARod bats right-handed. Then you get Matsui...Posada (BatsBoth)...Cano...Swisher (BatsBoth)and Cabrera (BatsBoth). What does bringing in a right-hander do for you other than giving all the switch-hitters a better shot at the short right-field porch? That comment really needed some explanation.

I lack the background to know the answer to this question with any degree of certainty but I'm sure Carroll knows (actually I'm by no means sure Carroll knows, I just phrased it this way to put pressure on Carroll to come up with the answer). Here it is: Who are the pitchers who have gone on to have successful Major League careers AS STARTERS (I don't want to hear about Rivera), after having TJ surgery BEFORE EVER REACHING the Majors? The thrust behind this question is my gut feeling that having TJ while in the low Minors (as Betances may have just had) is basically a death sentence when it comes to any potential he might have had as a Major League STARTING PITCHER. So...can Will (or anybody) name for me the 3 or 4 or 5 most successful Major League STARTING PITCHERS, who had TJ BEFORE reaching the Majors? Who are these guys?

I don't see any particular problem in selling draft picks as long as all the proceeds are put into a separate fund and can only be used in signing other draft picks (current or future).

Not entirely sure what Girardi's attractive option was last night. Hughes had appeared in 4 of the previous 5 games and, by dint of organizational decision, was not available last night. Period. End of story. Aceves, following his 3 inning stint Friday night, was nursing a stiff back. Unavailable. His closer is, oh, 65-70 years-old. He pitched Friday and warmed-up fully (though not making it into the game) on Saturday. Watching his prep in the 8th inning it was clear the decision had been made before the game that he only was going to be used for onew inning. I wasn't happy about Coke being given the whole inning, but seeing Gaudin warming-up behind him...sometimes there just aren't any good alternatives.

Johnny Damon: "Just when it looked like he was over the hill." Perroto jumps into the "WayBack" machine and dials that baby back to the 1st half of 2007. Damon compiled a .294 EQA last season. But, hey, why spoil a cheap shot? Wheeeeee!

Yeah, geez, that's what we Yankees fans have been holding our collective breaths for. The possibility of adding yet another one-dimensional DH to the roster. Because we don't have enough of those on hand. Matsui is struggling along with an EQA of .276. Nady (career EQA... .275) would be quite an upgrade.

In the "Where does this stuff get started?" column...Johnny Damon. Please stop. In his final three years with the Red Sox Damon played an average of 148 games per season. In his three full seasons in NY, it's an average of 144 games per. Where, exactly, is the significant change? I'm not seeing it.

"...it's Hughes, not Chamberlain who should relieve..." Geez Jaffe, you're...psychotic.

Amen, brother. My guess is we got Tomko there because Girardi didn't trust anybody else to come in AND NOT WALK A RUN IN! With Veras and Ramirez both walking the planet (roughly a man an inning)I don't know that there was a good choice there. The Yankees went through this early last season, where everyone in front of Joba/Rivera was awful. And I buried Cashman for his construction of the bullpen. But, come June, everyone pretty much seemed to straighten out and they were fine thereafter. Still too early in the season to be burying people, or building monuments to them for that matter.

Johnny Damon, "...hard, fast descent"? I thought he had, arguably, the best year, offensively, of his career last year. It really hasn't been all that hard or all that fast for Damon. And he seems reasonably ambulatory this spring.

One thing those massive legs might mean is that the kid is pretty much "maxed-out" physically. What you see now, may be all you'll ever see in terms of stuff. The pro football guys are constantly wrestling with this. Kids show up at the Combine looking (per the late Joel Buchsbaum of PFW) like they "...were weaned on Nautilus machines". The football guys have to wonder whether the kid has any room to grow or is this "it". And if it is "it", is "it" going to be...enough. I wonder how the baseball guys deal with..."it".

The entire piece would have been a LOT more interesting if all these "alternatives" were compared to the on-site candidate...Cody Ransom. It's not at all clear to me that any of these suggestions (Cubans aside) is obviously better than Ransom.

Posada\'s OPS last year, playing WITH the torn rotator cuff and WITH the torn labrum was .775. So, now that he\'s had BOTH repaired, he\'s projected at... .740? Let\'s turn the \"prayer possession arrow\" in the opposite direction. The Red Sox and Rays better PRAY Posada has fallen off this cliff. Nothing I\'ve heard about his rehab leads me to believe it will be less than 100%. I anticipate the Yankees will ease him back into the line-up in April; avoiding anything that looks like inclement weather. By May I think he\'ll be there...or thereabouts.

Speaking strictly for myself, I don\'t really need anyone to explain to me why steroids are different than lasix and tinted contact lenses. I just...don\'t.

The \"players of lesser stature\" thing is completely reversed. The lesser the stature the player, the more \"telling\" and the less \"asking\" is done. It\'s Jeter\'s elevated stature which makes this such a difficult thing to do. The move to CF is years too late. Now, with Spring Training at hand, the opportunity to move Jeter off SS for 2009 is gone. The time to do this is about a week after the season, so everybody involved has plenty of time to prepare. Jeter can go to Winter Ball or spend how ever much time in the Yankees\' Tampa complex he thinks he needs to prepare. Yes, I think the Yankees need to get Jeter away from SS, but this isn\'t the way to go about it. Oh yeah, one more thing, the time to do this was the day they got ARod. \"Uncle\" Joe and Cashman should have gotten together with Jeter and TOLD him that SS was ARod\'s and Jeter would get his pick of whatever other position (preferably CF) he wanted. And, then they could all come out smiling to meet the press and announce that it was all Derek\'s idea \"For the good of the team.\"

As a Yankees fan who\'s seen Tabata at various points since Spring Training of his 18 year-old season, allow me one observation: Jose Tabata has already \"filled-out\" way too much. Like all too many of Yankees top prospects over these past number of seasons, Tabata looks seriously out of shape. It\'s a source of continuing puzzlement to me that so many young players (think DeAngelo Jimenez, Nick Johnson, Dionner Navarro, Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera) have such bad bodies at such young ages. Do the Yankees not place ANY emphasis on conditioning for their prospects? Back to my original point. Tabata doesn\'t need filling out, he needs slimming down.

\"Structurally\" something figures to change significantly. That\'s the return to full-time work of Wang. I know it\'s an obvious point, but since you didn\'t mention his name anywhere in your analysis of the front-of-the-rotation I thought that perhaps he had slipped down the memory hole. Wang figures to slip into the #2 slot behind C.C.. Burnett projects as #3. Simply projecting Wang with his normal complement of innings, adding to C.C. and Burnett...I don\'t know but to me that figures to be a significant upgrade over what the Yankees got last year.

I\'m afraid I don\'t exactly, precisely, get the \"The Yankees are spending $40 million to replace what they got from the top-of-the-rotation (Mussina - Pettitte) last year\" thingee. First, of course, it isn\'t $40 million, it\'s more like $40 million minus the $28 million Mussina - Pettitte made last year. That\'s, like, $12 million. Second, since Sabbathia was much better than Mussina last year and Burnett was much better than his counterpart in this comparison, and since both are much younger, why it isn\'t reasonable to think that the added $12 million in payroll won\'t be visible on the field...well, all I\'ll say is that it\'s by no means obvious to me.

Having better options doesn\'t constitute an adequate rationale for not deploying Britton? As a matter of fact, it does. There\'s absolutely not one single thing about Britton\'s work at Scranton (or in the Bronx) that would justify giving him Robertson\'s innings. Robertson was a better pitcher last year and that gap is only going to grow.

There was something other than performance that dictated Britton\'s usage by the Yankees? Sure there was...THEY HAD BETTER OPTIONS THAN BRITTON. A question that Sheehan needed to address was: Whose innings should Britton have been taking? Guys like Ramirez and Dan Geise were exponentially better pitchers out of the bullpen when they pitched IN SCTANTON. Since Sheehan doesn\'t want to look too closely at Britton\'s work in the Bronx, the only thing we have left to look at are the relative performances of the available options when they pitched in Scranton. And the available options were MUCH, MUCH better there. The bullpen was not a problem for the Yankees in \'08 and it doesn\'t figure to be one in \'09. Chris Britton\'s disposition is (or should be) a complete non-issue.

Jay, I\'m sort of curious. How long do you intend to refer to Chamberlain\'s injury last year as \"season ending\"? He returned from his \"season ending\" injury in September, and made (count \'em) 10 appearances. Just sayin\'.

I continue to be puzzled by the overweening concern for Sabathia\'s size. The general category: FatGuy pitchers who demonstrated both ability and durability during their 20\'s...well that group seems to do very well, thank you, as they progress thru their 30\'s. Lolich...Rick Reuschel...Colon...David Wells...all pitchers with well estabilished FatGuy personnas. I\'m not sure who the counter-examples are. I thought about Sid Fernandez. Sid\'s career kind of went south around age 29, but Sid was anything but durable through his 20\'s; numerous trips to the DL. As a group, these guys seem to do well as they move through their 30\'s.