The Yankees are in last place, and two of their prospects are Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes. Twins fans will remember those names as being mentioned as possible trade bait for Santana, but not both together. Hughes had an ERA of 9.00 (and a 0-4 record, but pitchers have almost no control over that). Kennedy has an 8.48 ERA (0-3), and the Yankees are 20-22.
The Mets made the trade, giving up three pitchers and an outfielder. They’ve got a better record than the Yankees, 20-19, but not by much. But they have Santana, who has a 3.10 ERA (4-2 record).
Did the Yankees screw up by not making the trade? It depends. If they wanted to be the Yankees forever, then maybe. The Yankees, stereotypically, have bought the best players on the free agent market every year, as needed; trading their future one year and buying great players to fill in the next. Smaller-market teams have developed talent within, suffered through learning curves, and enjoy the good years when they can get them; there are no holes to fill in, because the future is always with them.
Would Santana have helped the Yankees win more games in 2008? No doubt. However, based on their minor league stats, I’d expect them to turn things around, and they’ll be very useful members of the Yankees’ rotation for a while (as much as it pains me to say this). It might be harder for teams that are used to winning to, well, not win. It’s painful to watch players go through learning curves. If you’re not used to learning curves, you might see it as a complete disaster.
It’s not. It’s a change in philosophy. It’s the Yankees looking at the smaller-market teams and saying, “Wait. We could do that, too, and it would be a whole lot cheaper.”
The whole question comes down to: do we want to win now, or do we want to win in the future? If the Yankees insisted on taking the philosophy “live for today, for tomorrow may never come”, then they needed to try harder to gain Santana . But it seems as if the Yankees have decided that tomorrow will come, and they’ve held onto their future.
The only thing they might want to notice is that future doesn’t always turn out the way you expect. “Sure things” fail sometimes, and you never know when.
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