SupremeCommander wrote:

TMS wrote:so instead of offering Johnny Damon anything more than 2 years $14M, we instead end up spending $6M on Nick "the injury" Johnson & now on the cusp of trading prospects to acquire a .245 hitter from the NL who's way past his prime in Lance Berkman who's making $14.5M this year & has a $15M team option next year with a $2M buyout... let's see, that adds up to at least $22.5M prorated along with prospects dealt to try & "save money" & fill a hole that wouldn't have needed to be filled had we just held onto Johnny Damon from the very beginning... wonderful.

Houston is including $4 mil this year and will pick up Berkman's buyout

And they've already paid 7.5 mil of his salary. So this year they will have paid $11.5 of his $14.5 mil contract. Getting a hitter as good as he is for only $3 mil seems like a no-brainer to me. If you watched last night's game, you can see that there clearly is no such thing as having too much hitting.

Joe didn't have one of his better games but even still, the team just looked lifeless..We better snap out of it by tomorrow. Toronto's gonna come in here all loosey-goosey ready to play. That team has a lot of talent and they always seem to play us tough. We're gonna have our hands full, we better be ready...AJ had a dynamite curveball his last time out in Cleveland. Hopefully we see some carryover..

I wish we would've spent more time on the pen. I think Wood might be a waste of time.

TMS wrote:i think Austin Kearns was a very nice acquisition... he adds good depth for our bench & we literally gave up nothing to get him... we had no need to trade for Berkman tho, even tho we didn't give up any top prospects, it still takes pieces away from future potential deals that might come our way... Melancon was obviously not what the Yankees hyped him up to be, but our offense was not an area of need... the DH slot was being used effectively to give guys a half day off & Cervelli has done a great job of catching all year... now we're forced to catch Jorge on most nights & his defensive skills are clearly not what they used to be... our only areas of need were to shore up our bench & bullpen, & possibly add another starting pitcher if a good deal came along... i'm cool w/Cashman not giving up a lot to get a stopgap starter while Andy rehabs, but his answer to upgrading over Joba as the setup man is to bring in a guy pitching to a 6+ ERA in the weaker hitting AL Central? i usually support most of Cashman's moves, but lately the moves he's made have really been headscratchers.

Well to be fair, I think the Wood acqusition was made with replacing Park in mind not Joba..Although if Joba continues to falter, we now have a pretty good option to go along with Robertson in those late game situations if need be. I think that was the idea -- an overall bullpen enhancement, not specifically a Joba replacement..The 8th is still Joba's I'm thinking, esp. coming off two good outings in a row..His to lose -- but if he continues to underperform to the point where we need to try something else, we now have an additional option -- a guy with plus stuff that even has experience closing games. Kerry Wood and his stuff for $500,000 along with the Indians picking up some of his remaining salary for the rest of the year?? Complete no-brainer if you ask me. I mean we got this guy for a bag of marbles...Wood might wind up being the most important of the 3 new additions.

nyk4ever wrote:i personally think cashman might have made this move for wood so joba actually has some competition for once. joba has been handed everything since he came up to the yanks and hasn't had to really work for anything. seems to me that for a long while there joba lost his competitiveness and i think this move was made in part to get him riled up and competing again. i see joba taking this as a challenge and he starts looking like the pitcher of old again.

Yup. I think that was definitely part of it as well. Good call.

TMS wrote:Finest, we got Kerry Wood for a bag of marbles because he's been absolutely horrible this season.

i think you're looking a little too far into kerry wood's numbers this year. he had blister problems which limited him to only 20 games with the indians and most of his bloated era is due to a 5run stinker he had. he had far more clean sheets than clunkers and here with the yankees joe has the luxury of taking him out and bringing someone else in at the first sign of trouble.. something manny acta didn't have with the crappy indians bullpen.

listen im not proclaiming that we got a guy whose going to be joba from 3 years ago, but he does have the ability to do it. we got him for nothing, i think it's worth taking the chance, especially for what we gave up.