Let Me Explain How Much Of A Fucking Idiot You Are

Well, the (totally boring and anti-climactic) World Series is over, and Hot Stove season has officially begun for the MLB. You know what that means! Thousands of hack sportswriters bombarding the print, television, radio, and digital worlds with their hack predictions for their hack publications about who will sign with who and blah blah blah. It all becomes white noise at a certain point, and it’s best just to tune it out and see what happens for yourself. But I care about my Yankees, and I don’t want Brian Cashman taking advice from the likes of Andrew Marchand over at ESPN New York (he has, after all, been known to demonstrate exceedingly poor judgement in the past. No, I’m not talking about trading Montero. I’m talking about this). Marchand stands out from the horde of idiots in the ESPN.com stable only for giving so little of a shit about his credibility that he doesn’t seem to care that every blog post he writes for the site is riddled with typos and blatant grammatical errors. Now, he has thrown his two cents in about what the Yankees should do this offseason after their crash-and-burn ALCS. Take it away, dumbass!

1. Trade for Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle

Oh my god. No. Please god, no.

Marchand proposes that the Yankees should trade A-Rod, Eduardo Nunez, and Ivan Nova to the Miami Marlins for Reyes and Beuhrle. This is an incredibly stupid idea. Oddly, Marchand himself does a pretty good job of explaining why:

“They will also part with one player (Nunez), who they think can be an everyday player, and another (Nova), who was their No. 2 playoff starter a year ago…”

“The Yankees would pay none of Rodriguez’s salary, but would be adding payroll, further complicating their 2014 mandate of $189 million or bust…”

So basically, the only sensible goal that could be attained by trading A-Rod–shedding payroll by absolving the responsibility of paying all or part of what remains on his monumentally oversized $275 million contract–would not be achieved, and in fact the Yankees would be giving up two other young, valuable players for yet more bloated veteran contracts that they don’t need. Does this sound crazy to anyone else? Anyone?

Look, I understand wanting to trade A-Rod. He’s a weirdo asshole who sucks in the postseason and is a shell of his former self. Everybody hates him, including me, and I would love for someone to take him of our hands IF we can get something of equal or greater value in return and the trade would allow the payroll to conform to the Steinbrenner sons’ annoying penny-pinching standards. This proposed trade would accomplish neither of these things. A-Rod is never going to have another 2007-type season again, but if healthy he can still be a serviceable .270-20-80 guy. Hardly worthy of his contract, of course, but we know that already. And you know who else has a huge contract that they’re not worthy of? Jose Reyes. Reyes is one of the most overrated players in the baseball. He had one excellent year in 2011, and otherwise has been an exceedingly average player. His career OPS+ is a resoundingly mediocre 107 (for the statistically uninformed, that means he was only 7% better at getting on base and getting total bases than the average major league player). Take away his 144 OPS+ from his 2011 campaign and his career average is–you guessed it–exactly 100. Even in that 2011 season, his numbers were inflated by a flukeishly high .353 BABIP. Back to A-Rod – last year he put up an OPS of .783, by far the lowest he’s achieved since 1995, when he only played in 48 games. Reyes has only had an OPS above that three times in his career, and last year, when his OPS was .780, wasn’t one of them. He’s hardly worthy of the “star player” tag Marchand hangs on him, and I would suspect that the underwhelming production he would inevitably put up in pinstripes would cause him to be just as heartily booed by the Yankee faithful as A-Rod is. Reyes does steal a lot of bases, and his career SB success rate is a highly respectable 80%. But we already have Brett Gardner to do that stuff. The Yankees need Reyes even less than they need A-Rod, and about as much as they need Mark Buehrle (as if anyone really “needs” a mediocre starting pitcher in decline). Also, does Marchand not realize that the Yankees ALREADY HAVE A FUCKING SHORTSTOP?? You might have heard of him, he’s some guy named DEREK MOTHERFUCKING JETER. Marchand tries to explain his way around this by saying that Jeter and Reyes could split time at DH, or that Jeter could move over to third. But if you think either Jeter or Reyes would be happy with this arrangement, that you’ve either been huffing paint or are Dick Morris.

Marchand’s next suggestion is not as insane as his first one, but it’s still pretty dumb.

2. Sign Torii Hunter

According to Marchand, the Yankees’ corner outfielders should be a 38-year old Torii Hunter and a 39-year old Ichiro. I’d like to see Ichiro back, which I’ll get into in a minute, but… Torii Hunter? Really? Yes, he hit .313 and drove in 92 runs last year, and the Yankees could use more .300-type contact hitters in their lineup to balance out all the .250-type sluggers. But if Hunter hits .313 again, then I hereby promise to lock myself in a room and listen to Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open” on a 24-hour loop. His BABIP last year was an absurd .389. His high BA was complete luck. He’s a career .277 hitter. He has been a pretty consistently good OBP guy throughout his career, but again: he’s going to turn 38 next June. His numbers are guaranteed to come crashing back to earth next season, and he doesn’t hit for a lot of power anymore. Yes, he was once one of the most dazzling defensive outfielders in baseball, but he’s (how old?) 38. He’s not what he once was. The Yankees don’t need another declining old guy. Almost everybody on the team is a declining old guy. They can get equal or better value out of someone younger and cheaper.

Which, now that I’ve explained to Andre Marchand how much of a fucking idiot he is, brings me to What I Think The Yankees Should Do In The Off Season:

Re-sign Kuroda, Pettitte, and Ichiro. Sabathia, Kuroda, and Pettitte amount to an excellent top of the rotation. They pitched brilliantly in the playoffs this year and had the offense been able to hit at all, the Yankees would have easily won the World Series. Keep them together and we can match up well against any other rotation in the league in the playoffs. As for Ichiro, he seemed to have dropped off a cliff the last couple of years, but getting traded to New York really seemed to rejuvenate him. He hit .322 with 14 SB for the Yankees in 67 games, and had that totally badass, ninja-like (note: this is not a racist statement, but in fact a rather apt comparison) slide into home in the division series against the Orioles. I know I complained about old outfielders in my last paragraph, but he’s still an excellent defender and adds some much needed speed and baserunning savvy to the top and/or bottom of the Yankee lineup. To be clear, no, I’m not one of those morons who thinks the Yankees “hit too many home runs” last year and that’s why they lost so they need to sign a bunch of scrappy leadoff hitters. That’s retarded. But some balance is necessary.

Let Swisher walk. Swisher has been very reliable over four seasons with the Yankees, putting up consistently good power and OBP numbers. His jovial party animal demeanor (not to mention his faux-hawk) have endeared him to Yankee fans. But he’s been horrible in the postseason. I’d still definitely want to re-sign him if he came at a good value, but apparently he and his superagent Scott “dickface” Boras are looking for “Jayson Werth money” (in reference to the ridiculous 7-year, $126 million contract Werth signed before the 2011 season with the Nationals). Of course, Jayson Werth didn’t even deserve Jayson Werth money, so good luck finding the cash elsewhere, Swish.

Remodel the outfield. Now that they’ve exercised his $15 million option for 2013, the Yankees should explore trade options for Curtis Granderson, who has become a frustratingly one dimensional player. Despite the fact that he hit 43 home runs in 2012, he struck out 195 times, hit a career-low .232, had an OBP of only .319 and stole only 10 bases. His slugging percentage was below .500, even though he hit over 40 HR. How is that even possible? How can a guy–unless that guy is the perennial all-or-nothing hitting champion of the majors, Adam Dunn–be 2nd in the league in HR but 35th in in slugging and 52nd in OPS? It’s crazy. Yes, he’s still a valuable hitter because he hits a lot of HR, and he did drive in and score over 100 runs in 2012. But, it’s getting painful to watch him take two fastballs right down the middle before flailing feebly at a slider way out of the strike zone like half the time he comes up. He has a horrible approach at the plate and it’s really starting to piss me off. So if Cashman can get one or two high-level prospects for him, pull the trigger. If no good offers present themselves, well, still having that run production in the lineup is hardly the end of the world. But move him over to LF, put Ichiro back in right, and have Gardner play center. Statistically, Granderson cost the Yankees twelve runs with his defense this year. That’s horrible. Get him out of CF.

If they are able to trade Granderson, then put together a package based around some combination of Hughes, Nova, and/or some prospects like Romine or Betances for either Justin Upton of the D’Backs or Alex Gordon of the Royals. Two young outfield talents who could potentially be on their way to perennial all-star status.

Of course, if George Steinbrenner were still around, he would probably trade Granderson and go after prize free agent Josh Hamilton, but those days are over. Suddenly the Yankees are all about balancing their budget and shit. Never thought I’d miss the Boss, but his tightwad asswipe sons are making me, sort of…