Big Deadline Move Puts Yankee Future at Risk

The talent distribution in the Yankees' farm system can be best described as a pyramid with no bottom. At the very top are superb pitching prospects such as Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain. Below them are several other young pitchers who are almost as intriguing, names like Ian Kennedy, Alan Horne, George Kontos, and Dellin Betances. Still further down are pitchers like Tyler Clippard and Jeff Karstens, who will probably succeed in the majors, but not as top-of-the-rotation starters. Beneath them — where the prospective position players should reside — there is only air.

Between now and the July 31 nonwaiver trading deadline, general manager Brian Cashman and the Yankees have to evaluate just how much help they need, if any, to maintain their current run at the wild card, and which of these and other pitchers they are willing to deal to get it. There is little doubt that if the Yankees want a player like the Texas Rangers' Mark Teixeira — who could shore up the leaky first base position not only for this season but in years to come as well — they can have him, but only at the cost of one of their top young arms. That has to be the price, as there isn't anything else to trade.

For most of the George Steinbrenner era, the move for Teixeira would have been made faster than you can say "Jim Deshaies for Joe Niekro." Going back to Ken Clay, Steinbrenner never trusted young pitching. He never had the patience to accept that the vast majority of young pitchers do not leap to the bigs fully formed, as Dwight Gooden did, but that they require some educational adversity and abuse at the hands of opposition batters before figuring out how to retire major league hitters. Sure, some never do figure that out, but even today, with the exception of rare talents, there is no way of knowing which pitchers have the makeup to rise until you try them. Even the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum, as dominating a young pitcher as we've seen in years, has taken his share of lumps while he's learned on the job.