After a long day of making changes to my current work-in-progress (and, let's be real here, catching up on the DVR as I hide from a roach that is loose somewhere in my the vicinity of my bedroom) I walked away from my computer to heat up a Trader Joe's frozen chocolate lava cake (Yes is the answer to whatever you're thinking right now) and eat said lava cake. I go back to my computer in what must be a little less than a half hour and my Twitter feed has exploded with the Montero trade news. My first thought "BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE AWESOME JESUS HEADLINES THAT MIGHT'VE BEEN?" followed quickly by, "Wait. They have to know something about Pineda and Campos that makes this worthwhile." And while I don't believe AT ALL in playing baseball on paper, Pineda does have what looks like really decent stats for a 22-year-old, and it sounds like Campos has been showing some promise. And I've always trusted Brian Cashman.
I bring that up, because this whole winter thus far, all I've been hearing is Yankees fans whining about the Yankees being cheap and not pulling the trigger on any big stars, when the ones out there weren't exactly Cliff Lee caliber. Also: I didn't realize there was a deadline on making big winter moves. The Yanks signed Thumper in January; the A-Rod deal went down on Valentine's Day. My point is: Don't complain about lack of moves until it's spring training. And even then, you never know. So, yeah, don't doubt Brian Cashman.
Anyway, I'm heartened by what I'm seeing from beat writers quoting other MLB executives who think the Yankees really did get a great deal here. While commiserating with my father on the deal (we are most excited about Hiroki Kuroda, whose name sounds a lot like Rookie Carroca, the character from
My Favorite Year, whom our late Labrador Rookie was named after, but I digress), he brought up the point that no one was really sold on Montero as a catcher anyway, so where were they going to play him? So that's one little consolation in losing someone who may end up being an elite power hitter in a few years.
Also funny is that this all goes down on Friday the 13th. And that 4/5 of the rotation have a last name that ends in the letter A, 5/5 if Garcia is the fifth starter. And that the Twitter trending topics looked something like this an hour ago:
The
Walk to Remember juxtaposition kind of cracked me up, but then I am enjoying a bit of a post-lava cake sugar rush at the moment.
