Why Brian Cashman is like Kim Kardashian, and other Yankee thoughts

Brian Cashman, the GM who brought us that wonderful Jesus Montero-Michael Pineda deal, took a cue from both "Undercover Boss" and Kim Kardashian with his appearance in the bleachers Sunday. By wearing that same stupid wig/visor than he did while rappelling a building, he had about as ridiculous -- and as obvioius -- a disguise as the bosses do on "Undercover Boss." (An aside -- is anybody on that show ever really fooled? You have some new low-level staffer wearing wigs out of the Harpo Marx Collection, and being followed by a camera crew, and nobody catches on? C'mon now.)

And Cashman was like Kim Kardashian in trying his best to make a spectacle of himself to get publicity. He's been GM since 1998, yet it took him until 2012, after he was finally on the hot seat a little bit, for him to go hang out with the proles in the bleachers? Spare me. It is about as shameless a publicity ploy as Kardashian's faux-mance with Kanye West, where they have hit up nearly every high-trafficked tourist spot in New York to show off their "love." How perfectly fake. Come to think of it, maybe we're going to see Kanye and Kim in the bleachers soon, too. Good grief.

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When the best you can say about Phil Hughes' pitching is that he didn't stink as much as he has in his previous four starts, it is not a good night. Especially when he didn't even pitch as well as Hector Noesi (traded as part of the Jesus Montero/Michael Pineda deal) did last night for the Seattle Mariners.

Speaking of Montero, he went 4-for-4 last night for Seattle, and hit a home run the night before. His batting average is now up to .294 (better than every Yankee starter except for Derek Jeter) and he has hit 4 homers (as many as Jeter and A-Rod) and driven in 13 runs (which would put him at third on the Yankees). Not that the Yankees could use him or anything, especially with Nick Swisher out of the lineup.

Meanwhile, rumor has it that Pineda caught up on his reading, finishing "The Hunger Games" just in time so he could catch the movie in the theaters. Next up, to steal a joke from my friend Sully Baseball, a thrilling game of Sudoku. Good times!


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Some Yankee fans think that with Michael Pineda-Jesus Montero trade, there must be a pony in here somewhere

I was in Whole Foods yesterday when Squawker Jon called to tell me that Michael Pineda had a torn labrum, and would be out for the year. Needless to say, my reaction didn't exactly fit the peace-and-love vibe of the store! And I am still positively irate, over 12 hours later.

Best case scenario is that Pineda comes back some time early next summer. Meanwhile, Jesus Montero is starting to heat up, and even getting enough time at catcher to qualify in that position in fantasy baseball. Not bad for somebody who we were told could never catch.

And Hector Noesi is a major league pitcher for the Mariners getting a start tonight. Given that Pineda is out for what could be a year and a half, and given that there is no guarantee he will be able to pitch the way he once did, this trade is a complete and utter disaster for the Yankees so far.

Yet there is a sizable contingent of sportswriters and Yankee fans who still say that it is "too soon" to evaluate the trade. Really? Frankly, they remind me of the naive boy in the story presented with a mound of animal excrement as a Christmas gift. In that anecdote, the little boy keeps on digging through the poop, saying, "There must be a pony in here somewhere."

Newsflash: there ain't no pony. It's not Jose Campos, who is now being touted as being a superstar to justify the trade, even though he is only in Single A. And it certainly isn't Michael Pineda, who may never live up to his promise, and could end up being more like Phil Hughes Part Deux than anything else (and Hughes was terrible again last night.)

There is no bright side for the Yankees to this trade, as much as some try to downplay this as being no big thing. And don't tell me it's simply bad luck. It should have occurred to Brian Cashman that the Mariners might have been selling him a bag of beans here. It's not just that the Mariners have a history of trying to hold up the Yankees -- remember how they demanded more in the Cliff Lee trade? It's that why would they want to trade Pineda in the first place, if he was supposed to be so great?

I was against this trade from the beginning -- it never added up to me, the way it did to the "experts." So I'm not the least bit surprised that this has ended so poorly. (Incidentally, at least trading Montero for Cliff Lee, as costly as it would have been, may have helped the Yankees win No. 28 in 2010. Instead, Cashman gave up the team's best prospect for what is turning out to be a whole heap of nothing.)

And let's review the fact that Pineda's 2011 second-half numbers were so terrible -- he went from 8-6 with a 3.03 ERA and a 1.035 WHIP to a 1-4 record in the second half, with a 5.12 ERA and a 1.224 WHIP, and a significantly diminished velocity. Gee, did it ever occur to Cashman that there could have been a physical reason for that decline?  How can he be so naive?

Then again, we're talking about a GM who actually thought that signing Everyday Pedro Feliciano to a two-year, $8 million deal was a good risk, and who seemed to be the only person in the world to be shocked that Feliciano got injured so quickly into his Yankee tenure!

Then there is what injury expert Will Carroll of Sports Illustrated wrote on February 29 of this year, before Pineda ever even threw a pitch in a spring training game, giving Pineda a "red light" as an injury risk:

The Pineda trade seems like a coup for the Yankees, even giving up a solid hitter in Jesus Montero, but Pineda is in a bad situation. He's young, coming off a season where he saw a massive innings increase and a hit-the-wall moment as bad as any we've seen in several seasons. He's a red flag risk on that alone, which is horrible. (DAN STAT). On top of that, the records of Joe Girardi and Larry Rothschild in dealing with precisely this type of situation is terrible. As much as I like Pineda the pitcher, I can't handle Pineda the risk.

Then Carroll wrote this on April 4 about Pineda:

The parallels between Pineda and Phil Hughes are too perfect. Well, not perfect, since we're talking about young pitchers and injuries. Hughes injured his leg, started overthrowing a bit, and ended up with a sore shoulder. It set back his career more than we realize, even now. Pineda came in out of condition, still showing signs of last year's workload, and finally admitted that his arm was hurting.

An MRI came back with "no structural damage" and the calming diagnosis of tendinitis. Don't be fooled. The biceps tendon is a structure, one that's important to a pitcher. One of the buzzwords in sports medicine is the "biceps-labrum complex." Essentially, the labrum and biceps tendon work in concert, in ways doctors are still figuring out. The classic "buckethandle" labrum tear might have a different mechanism than doctors long thought.

As for Pineda, he might be better served looking to another starter on his staff for a better comp. CC Sabathia had some shoulder issues early in his career. A trip to Glenn Fleisig's lab in Birmingham helped him change some things, and the results speak for themselves. Why Pineda isn't heading down there is beyond me. 

So why didn't the Yanks do what Carroll recommended? And why didn't they take Pineda's condition seriously?

All spring, we heard Cashman downplay Pineda's lack of velocity this spring and make excuses for him. Now he admits that this was a sign that he was hurt. Gee, ya think?

I have to wonder, what is it that Cashman is going to have to do to get some of his defenders to stop justifying his actions? He gave away the franchise's most highly touted prospect, somebody who he himself compared to Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols, for a player who may very well have been damaged goods in the first place. Boy, that Cash is sooooo smart, isn't he?

I have said it before and I will say it again. Brian Cashman has exactly one tool in the toolkit -- the ability to spend a lot of money. Yes, he got Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit -- this is the trade Cashman fans always bring up whenever the subject of  his record comes up. But he got to make that trade for two reasons. One was that Ozzie Guillen despised Swisher and wanted him out. The second was that it was a salary dump -- the White Sox still owed Swisher $20+ million, and the Yanks could afford that type of salary.

Even the Curtis Granderson trade involved the ability of the Yanks to pay for his salary. (And it's not like the Yanks got a steal on getting him in the first place -- they still had to give up Ian Kennedy, Austin Jackson and Phil Coke. Granderson is a superstar now, but he didn't come cheap.)

So tell me, what are the great Brian Cashman deals in recent years that he has made on his baseball savvy? Trading for Javier Vazquez again? Trying to get back Carl Pavano? Signing Kei Igawa?

And sorry, I don't buy Cashman's story that Pineda fully tore his labrum just this weekend. Some of his acolytes think it's cute, the way Cash constantly plays fast and loose with the truth. I don't. Why should I buy anything Cashman says, when it is clear he has a very long track record of saying what he needed to, regardless of whether it was accurate or not, in order to deflect criticism? When you do things like tell reporters about how A.J. Burnett really has great numbers, and that we all need to smoke the objectivity pipe to see it, then you pay the Pirates $20 million on Burnett's salary just to get rid of him, you don't exactly come across as a truthteller.

I think it's time that some folks wake up and drink the reality potion, to use a Cashmanism. And the reality is that Brian Cashman is a pretty crummy general manager. I said at the time of the trade that I had zero faith in his judgment. My faith in his judgment now? It's less than zero!

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On Michael Pineda, A.J. Burnett, Pedro Feliciano, and the media's double standard

I just want to, for once, admit that Squawker Jon was totally right on something. Specifically, he called the Michael Pineda injury issue correctly three weeks ago, comparing it to Phil Hughes' tendinitis, and mocking Joe Girardi for calling the diagnosis at the time "great news:"

When reporters noted that Hughes was also diagnosed with shoulder tendinitis last year, and he missed three months and finished the season with a 5.79 ERA, here was Girardi's response:

"They both got tendinitis, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're similar [injuries]," Girardi said. "There's a lot of parts to that shoulder."

Girardi's rationalizing about Pineda's injury reminds me of how some people said that Johan Santana would make it back faster than Chien-Ming Wang and others who had the same injury because all injuries are different.

Jon also noted in that column about how the Mets and Yanks get treated differently in the media when it comes to such injuries. He also has been saying to me in person that Andy Pettitte would be pitching before Pineda would.

Anyhow, now Pineda has had a setback that looks to be pretty bad -- he isn't expected back for what could be months. You know, just the way that Hughes shoulder tendinitis kept him out until after the All-Star Break.

Marc Carig wrote something rather shocking for the Star-Ledger about Pineda, talking about why the Yanks are so upset on the recent news on the pitcher (emphasis added):

When the Yankees placed Michael Pineda on the 15-day DL, they did so for two reasons.

They wanted to rest his right shoulder, which the Yankees believed to be afflicted by minor tendinitis. And they hoped to give him a chance to mentally regroup after a difficult first spring training with the Yankees. Conveniently, the minor injury afforded the Yankees the benefit of time, which they hoped Pineda would use to catch up on the conditioning he did not do in the winter.

Which is why, privately, the Yankees were stunned Saturday when the 23-year-old Pineda reported lingering pain in the back of his right shoulder.

I was against the Jesus Montero/Michael Pineda trade from Day One, and nothing has changed my mind. And to hear that he was put on the DL in part because of his conditioning is appalling. Didn't the Yankees have enough pitchers -- Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain, to name two -- who have shown up to spring training overweight and out of shape? They had to trade Montero to get another one? Good grief.

Obviously, I knew Pineda showed up fat to spring training, but to hear that he was put on the DL for said lack of conditioning is outrageous. Let me get this straight -- Pineda is in only his second season, and he is already acting like an entitled veteran? Who did the due dilgence on his personality? Yet again, Cashman shows a breathtaking lack of judgment, something he never gets called on by his buddies in the press.

Granted, Montero hasn't exactly set the world on fire as a Mariner just yet, but at least he is in shape and playing, two things Pineda is not. And I have to wonder if, yet again, Cashman got taken to the cleaners by another GM.

Also, when Cashman is not outwitted by other GMs in the game, he does dumb signings, like signing Everyday Pedro Feliciano for two years and $8 million after the Mets completely overworked him. And guess what? Chances are that Feliciano, who is recovering from rotator cuff surgery, will never pitch for the Yankees, something completely unshocking to every Met fan out there.

In other news, A.J. Burnett, the pitcher we Yankee fans are paying over $20 million for to *not* pitch for the Yankees in the next two seasons, pitched seven shutout innings Saturday for the Pittsburgh Pirates, giving up only three hits and striking out seven. And yes, he came back from an orbital bone fracture quicker than Pineda will return!

The trade of Burnett to the Pirates really did not get enough media scrutiny. As maddening as Burnett was as a Yankee, it makes no sense to me to pay him $20+ million of the $33 million owed to him to pitch somewhere else. Some Yankee fans acted like Cash was some magician for getting rid of him. Gimme a break. The Yanks would have been better off keeping him and sticking him in the bullpen than paying him so much money to pitch elsewhere, simply to keep their options open.

Anyhow, the Yanks are stuck with Pineda being injured -- he's going for a dye-contrast MRI this week -- and with Brian Cashman, the most overrated GM in all of baseball. Oh, joy.

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What's the Worst Thing About Friday's Opening Day Debacle?

It is only one game, but geez, Squawker Jon and all the Yankee-haters of the world had to enjoy yesterday's Yankees loss. As my friend Joe, a Red Sox fan, put it to me on Facebook, "My joy in seeing Sabathia give up the grand slam was only exceeded by watching Mariano blow the save AND take the loss." And Squawker Jon may be on the disabled list from doing the Snoopy Dance!
Sheesh.

And what was up with Joe Girardi intentionally walking the immortal Sean Rodriguez to load the bases in order to have CC face Carlos Pena, who then hit that grand slam? Yikes. Sabathia seemed to be laboring in this game, that's for sure.

Oh, and so much for that five-man infield, eh? Raul Ibanez home run aside, it wasn't a good day for the Yanks. Not to mention having to hear the trash talk! Not a good day.

I heard Suzyn Waldman going on and on in the pre-game about the exciting Game 162 the Rays had to get into the playoffs last year. You'd hardly know, though, that it was against the Yankees!

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Jon also asked when the Michael Pineda era was going to begin. Smartypants.

An aside -- there has been nothing that has happened since the Pineda/Montero trade that has made me any less queasy over it, from Pineda showing up to spring training overweight, to the lack of speed on his fastball, to the tendinitis. He seems like a nice enough guy, but I still think the Yanks should have not made the deal.

And to be blunt, after Brian Cashman's little scandal, suffice it to say that I have even less faith in Cashman's judgment than I did before. And it's not the infidelity itself, it's the fact that it apparently took him literally years to realize that Louise Neathway was a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Not to mention how he wrote that bunny-boiler a letter of  recommendation on Yankees letterhead. How appalling, as is him reportedly having her sit in the same section as the Yankee wives.  What was he thinking?

On a brighter note, looking forward to the rest of the season. And Jon, you can chortle now, but at least my team will be playing meaningful games past Opening Day!


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Imagine if Mets had Yankee-style injuries

A pitcher pitches an inning with a broken elbow. Another pitcher suffers a gruesome injury jumping on a trampoline. A third pitcher, traded for the team's top prospect, goes on the DL. Sounds like the Mets. But it's the Yankees.

The Mets have a well-deserved reputation for screwing up medical matters, but the Yankees have had their own woes lately.  The difference is that nobody is saying "Same old Yankees." Not yet, anyway.

On  Saturday, Cesar Cabral, who was on track to win a job in the Yankees bullpen, pitched an inning with a broken elbow. Now he's on the 60-day DL.

In 2009, Jon Niese appeared to injure his hamstring making a play at first. The crack Met medical team decided to let him try a practice pitch. I still cringe at the sight of Niese crumpling to the ground, now with a completely torn hamstring. 

If Cabral had been a Met, we probably would have had photoshopped pictures of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the mound in a Met uniform while Met trainers agree with him that the loss of his arms and legs is "just a flesh wound."

After missing most of last season, former Met phenom Ike Davis has seen his comeback complicated by something called Valley Fever. The general reaction? Only the Mets could have a player come down with a disease most people have never heard of.

After missing most of last season, former Yankee phenom Joba Chamberlain has seen his comeback complicated by an injury caused by jumping on a trampoline. The general reaction? What a good dad!

When the Mets traded top prospect Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano, they were accused of negligence in failing to realize that Zambrano had a damaged arm.

When the Yankees traded top prospect Jesus Montero for Michael Pineda, manager Joe Girardi described it as "great news" when an MRI showed only shoulder tendinitis.

When reporters noted that Phil Hughes was also diagnosed with shoulder tendinitis last year, and he missed three months and finished the season with a 5.79 ERA, here was Girardi's response:

"They both got tendinitis, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're similar [injuries]," Girardi said. "There's a lot of parts to that shoulder."

Girardi's rationalizing about Pineda's injury reminds me of how some people said that Johan Santana would make it back faster than Chien-Ming Wang and others who had the same injury because all injuries are different.

Of course, all injuries are different. Pineda might miss much less time than Hughes.

Or he might miss more time.

It's way too early to judge the Pineda-Montero trade. And unlike the Kazmir debacle, this trade looked like a good deal for the New York team, or at least a fair deal, depending on how upset one was to see Montero go.
 
But it's fair to say that the trade could look better as of now. And it's fair to say that Mets are no longer alone when it comes to medical misadventures.