deathdealer
The Phenom
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Akok8HT7oFjlM81pKrxdAYYRvLYF?slug=jp-leetrade070910
This is how it feels. This, New York, is what it’s like to be a baseball fan anywhere else in the country.
Normally, it’s the Yankees breaking hearts. They sign the best free agents. They trade for stars. This is the New York Yankees’ world, and 29 other teams deign to live in it.
And the script was going as usual Friday. New York was set to acquire Cliff Lee(notes) from the Seattle Mariners for three prospects, including its best, catcher Jesus Montero(notes). The dominant team in baseball would get even better by sacrificing kids from a system loaded with them. Championship No. 28 looked likelier than ever.
Then a snag. One of the prospects, David Adams, twisted an ankle six weeks ago. The Mariners saw medical reports and worried. They reopened the bidding. Texas swooped in. Two hours later, Cliff Lee was a Ranger.
The improbability of this was staggering. The billion-dollar Yankees lost to the bankrupt Rangers. The American League East lost to the West. New York lost to Arlington, Texas. This doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t.
It’s one thing for the Knicks to lose the LeBron James sweepstakes. Bumbling organizations run by foofs get outfoxed all the time. The Yankees are a legitimate franchise, though, an iconic monster, a moneymaker with a front office of tremendous businesspeople and scouts. The people in charge make them great. The Yankees’ brass would succeed in a small market, too.
And just as they landed Alex Rodriguez(notes) and Roger Clemens and David Cone and Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson(notes) and countless others in trades, they were going to get Cliff Lee because they wanted him, and what the Yankees want they get. For them to sacrifice a player of Montero’s caliber – at 20 years old, he is hitting well in Triple-A after a rough first month, and scouts see him as a 30-homer-a-year hitter – meant they coveted Lee. Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, is as loath to give up prospects as anyone outside of Tampa Bay, especially with the Yankees favorites to sign Lee when he hits free agency in November.
Consider the Yankees’ past open-market coups: CC Sabathia(notes), Mark Teixeira(notes) and A.J. Burnett(notes) in the $425 million offseason of 2008. Jason Giambi(notes) and Johnny Damon(notes) and Gary Sheffield(notes) and – ahem – Carl Pavano(notes) before that. Hideki Matsui(notes) and Jose Contreras(notes) and – double ahem – Kei Igawa(notes) and Hideki Irabu, too. Good, bad or otherwise, all of those signings reinforced that no matter who you are, no matter what you offer, the Yankees can and will trump you. Only once in recent years have they gone all-in and lost, and Boston spending $103 million for six years of Daisuke Matsuzaka(notes) doesn’t look nearly the privilege that it did then.
So in came the Rangers, underdogs not just because their owner, Tom Hicks, wiggled his way so deep into debt Major League Baseball needed to take control of the franchise’s finances. Nor because their GM, Jon Daniels, made this team what it is – a legitimate first-place outfit at 50-35, with the biggest division lead in the game – on the strength of dealing Teixeira to Atlanta for Elvis Andrus(notes), Neftali Feliz(notes) and others three years ago.
No, the Texas Rangers were not considered threats Friday morning because the Yankees fancied Lee, and whomever they fancy ends up in pinstripes.
Oh, they liked Johan Santana(notes) and Roy Halladay(notes) and Carlos Beltran(notes). When the price became prohibitive – either in prospects or dollars – they backed off. Not here. The Yankees offered a diamond to the Mariners when others wanted to give them a handful of zircon.
No shock, then, that when the Rangers came over the top with their own gem – first baseman Justin Smoak(notes): a VVS1 diamond grade when it comes to young talent – and added Blake Beavan, a 21-year-old sinkerballer who has a 2.78 ERA with 12 walks in 110 Double-A innings, plus reliever Josh Lueke and second baseman Matt Lawson, the Mariners jumped at the offer.
The Yankees were livid. They had Lee.
The Rangers were ecstatic. They have Lee.
And while the balance of power doesn’t shift tectonically, it makes the Rangers plenty more viable in October than they were Friday morning. Colby Lewis(notes) looks much better pitching Game 2 of a postseason series than he does an opener. With Josh Hamilton(notes), Vladimir Guerrero(notes), Nelson Cruz(notes), Ian Kinsler(notes), Michael Young(notes) and Andrus, the Rangers can mash with anyone, Yankees included.
Don’t mistake this for the Rangers being favorites. That role remains the Yankees’. They won the World Series last year. The Rangers have won one playoff game in the franchise’s 50-year history. Not one championship. Not one series. One game, the first of the 1996 postseason against the Yankees.
New York went on to win that World Series and four others since. They were called bad for baseball and the Evil Empire and cursed everywhere outside of the Bronx. And yet when they craved a player, he was theirs, because as much as winning is the Yankee way, even more so is getting what they want.
For once, they know how it feels when they don’t.
smug
