SEATTLE – When you have the best record in the league, many would simply stay content with what they have and not look to tinker with their already talented roster.
However, when you are the Yankees, the regular season is always just a warm-up for October and no season is more important than the one that is in front of them.
Therefore, it did come as a surprise on Friday morning to read a report from Joel Sherman of the New York Post that the Yankees were on the verge of finalizing a blockbuster trade with the Seattle Mariners to acquire ace left-hander Cliff Lee.
What started out as a definite, turned into a maybe, and by the end of the day fizzled out as the Mariners sent Lee to Texas instead, reneging on their original deal over alleged injury concerns as a matter of using them in their quest to get what they sought from the Rangers all along.
This is not the first time that Seattle has acted as sketchy trade partners.
Last year, when inquiring about pedestrian starter Jarrod Washburn, they asked for their best prospect, before eventually accepting a lesser deal from Detroit.
Unfortunately, Lee will not be a part of the Yankees during the rest of this season. They will have to settle for the consolation prize of signing him to a deal when the off-season begins and have him in the rotation for the start of 2011.
On the surface, one could have seen the trade as a head scratcher. Why would the Yankees need Cliff Lee when they already sported the best one-through-five man rotations in baseball with each having at least seven wins?
Putting six men into a five-man rotation was going to mean that someone would no longer be in the rotation, either sent to the bullpen or traded off the team.
In addition, some would suggest that this would have been another example of gluttony on the part of the Yankees. By stacking the deck so much in their favor going into October, they would make the postseason their own invitational.
This would bring out more nonsensical cries from those on the outside of the Yankees “buying championships”, how this is a “bad move for baseball”, and other assorted garbage spewed out from those in the (drive by) media who usually see a world without Yankee victory as some of triumph for humanity.
Thankfully, General Manager Brian Cashman and the rest of the organization do not live in such a world and handles the pressure of his job to a tee.
They know that if they win (as they did last year) those same vultures will criticize them for winning with a large payroll as much as they would criticize them for spending all of their money and falling short. Either way, the Yankees cannot win with a percentage of the public, so why care what they think anyway?
Having Lee on the team would have been an incredible addition had everything worked out. Starting out a playoff series with him and CC Sabathia in the first two games is a dream. This slides Andy Pettitte into the “Game 3” role and then allowing the Yankees to plan the rest from there.
As I wrote several weeks ago, the Yankees could not run the risk of having both the mentally combustible AJ Burnett and Javier Vazquez, start two out four games in a playoff series no matter how well they end up doing by the end of the season.
Burnett’s performance in the postseason marked his whole career. There was the great (Game 2 of the ALCS and World Series) and there was the bad (Game 5 of the ALCS and World Series). Seeing his extreme up-and-down season this year, they have no clue what to expect from him on a start-by-start basis.
The same for Vazquez, who has made a remarkable turnaround since his blowup in April where the Yankees saw fit to remove him from the rotation. Since then he has been tremendous. Even he resembled the 1968 version of Bob Gibson, no Yankee fan would still feel comfortable with him taking the ball on the road in Game 4 of the playoff series, especially if the team was trailing 2-1 because of his past.
Seeing this, the Yankees felt the need to get Lee on this roster.
They know firsthand that he is the one man capable of shutting their lineup down. Over the last three years, Lee has made six starts against them, winning five and posting an ERA of 2.84. The numbers would be even better if several of the runs charged to him did not come after he had at least a six-run lead.
Now, he goes to a Texas team that leads the American League by several games and appears poised to make its first postseason appearance since 1999. With Lee at the front of a rotation that features youngsters C.J Wilson and Colby Lewis, they no longer are first round pushovers.
If things work out, Lee will see the Yankees in the playoffs again.
If things really work out, Lee will be wearing pinstripes next season.
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