The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

So the Alex Rodriguez sweepstakes wound up not being so exciting, and the Miguel Cabrera sweepstakes do not involve the Yankees and I don’t care about them. This leaves the very exciting Johan Santana sweepstakes for me to care deeply about.

The latest reports are that the Yankees have offered up Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera and this is where my crazy comes in: I don’t want to see this happen! I am probably a few steps ahead of many other people who don’t want to trade Hughes because I admit I am crazy, and I will even tell you that the crazy really just comes from me be very attached to the idea of the Yankees having a very good “homegrown” starting pitcher (we haven’t had one of those since Andy Pettitte, the verdict is out on Chien-Ming Wang until we see how he does next year) and I think that person will be Phil Hughes.

Strangely, I am not attached to Joba Chamberlain this way. If he were included in the trade I would probably whine, but then get over the whole thing.

I am also convinced that if the Yankees trade Hughes for Santana, that Santana will be stabbed by a wandering homeless man or hit by a bus on his way to pitch his first game for the team. Anything involving ACE PITCHER acquisitions has completely backfired on the Yankees since 2002.

Yesterday ESPN’s Page 2 had a poll up. It was a simple poll. “Do you want Alex Rodriguez on your team?”, yes or no.

61% of people who replied said no. If you are one of these people you are insane. He is a jerk, he is stupid, he does whatever Scott Boras tells him to but he is a truly great baseball player. Unless Miguel Cabrera or Aramis Ramirez is your third basemen there’s no way he wouldn’t improve the team. In fact, in this land where Miguel Cabrera is your third basemen (I guess that’s Florida but who knows how long that will last) you should probably move him to first before he explodes trying to catch a ball and stick Rodriguez there.

I think the Yankees should hold their ground, but if these rumors circulating are correct and ARod himself has approached the organization I think it’s safe to throw that all out of the window as long as they…stand their new ground. What is that new ground? According to the Daily News it means Boras cannot be involved in the negotiations. If that’s true, and it happens, I’m cool with it.

Yes, it’s strange for a guy to negotiate without his agent but it’s happened before. The last time Andruw Jones’ contract was up, he and his father cut Boras out of the equation and dealt directly with the Braves. They gave the team the “hometown discount” which Boras would never have allowed.

I don’t think the Yankees would give or expect ARod to take any kind of discount (except maybe the “We are not insane like Brian Sabean” discount but that is standard across Major League Baseball), they just don’t want to deal with Boras and whatever crazy statistics he makes up to prove the thing that everyone knows: ARod should get paid a lot of money.

In other news, Mariano Rivera please accept your ridiculous contract already so that the team can concentrate on wooing Andy back.