We all know Brian Cashman is one of the good guys. He is still on the line now, more than ever before, picking the pitchers who are supposed to pitch the Yankees back to the top. Because if the Yankees don't win the World Series next year, these are the last pitchers Cashman gets to overrate and overpay, at least in New York.
Next winter, somebody else will be spending Steinbrenner's money on pitchers who are never quite as good at Yankee Stadium as they were before they got there.
This time around Cashman adds Carl Pavano, who is supposed to be the same kind of great catch out of the National League that Javier Vazquez was one year ago. Cashman pays Pavano just about $40 million, not even a year after paying Vazquez - whom the Yankees are desperate to put in a deal for Randy Johnson - even more than that.
Cashman has offered Jaret Wright - who may or may not have shoulder issues - the rather insane amount of $21 million after a 15-win season that followed four on the scrap heap. As always in baseball, you don't have to be the best guy to get rich, just the best guy available. Pavano is the best guy available. The Red Sox were willing to offer him three years, even with his big breakout year for the Marlins. When Pavano's agent told them the Yankees were offering four years guaranteed, the Red Sox said, good luck in New York, and signed Boomer Wells.
So Pavano is this year's Vazquez. Who was last year's Jeff Weaver. Another big pitching steal for Cashman who stiffed in New York when it was all on the line. I like Cashman a lot, and only guys who work on the inside with the Yankees really know how much dirt he has to eat working for Steinbrenner. But to mix a baseball metaphor here, if you can remember a time since the Rocket when Cashman really hit one out of the park signing a pitcher, send up a flare.
And we are only talking about starters here, not all the relief guys we have been told were going to set up Mo Rivera the way Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton did when the Yankees were on top, and constructed much more creatively than they are now.
I asked Cashman once when the Yankees were going to come up with a big, strong kid like Josh Beckett.
"Teams who get the first pick in the draft get big strong guys like Josh Beckett," he said.
The Yankees don't get that kind of draft choice. They don't do much with the draft choices they have. They just spend money like no other team in sports history, and the edge that gives them keeps them on top in the American League East, and had them three outs away from the World Series against the Red Sox before the roof began to cave in.
Now they are willing to spend more than $60 million on Pavano and Wright, and who knows what they might spend to get Johnson before they are through. Because guess what? If they don't get Johnson, they still don't have enough pitching.
"We like Carl Pavano, even if we didn't like him at that price," one American League executive said yesterday from Anaheim. "I think everybody likes him, even if there's always concerns about what happens to National League numbers when guys like Pavano have to go up against American League hitters. And there's one other thing to consider with him, at least as far as the Yankees are concerned: Failure with the Florida Marlins is different than failure with the Yankees."
Pavano won 18 games last year. Before that his lifetime record in the big leagues was 39-50. Wright? If he throws 200 innings for the Yankees this season, it will be the first time he has done that in his life. You know what I hear out of Atlanta? That they were just waiting to see who was going to make a $20 million mistake on him.
So the Yankees have Pavano and Wright and Mike Mussina, who was Cashman's big buy a few years ago and has yet to slip a World Series ring on his finger. They are trying to get rid of Vazquez, whom Cashman described as the Yankees' biggest acquisition of last winter, bigger than Alex Rodriguez or Kevin Brown. Brown, of course, was the big-ticket replacement for Jeff Weaver.
The Yankees would now pay anything to get rid of Brown. They would have taken a bag of balls - or, in that particular instance, Bag of Balls Loaiza - for Jose Contreras. Maybe you are spotting a trend here with the pitching choices the Yankees are making these days.
Nobody except people inside the Yankees' Crack Baseball Committees, Bronx and Tampa divisions, know for sure what goes on in meetings that reportedly grow more weird every year. Or who Steinbrenner's favorite talent scout is at a particular moment as he grows more weird with age.
What we do know for sure is that Cashman is the Yankee general manager. We know Steinbrenner allowed him to attend the winter meetings this time. We know Cashman can still spend. We also know the Yankees haven't won since 2000. When Denny Neagle was supposed to be the Yankees' big steal. Neagle got 15 starts with the Yankees. Weaver got 32. Now Vazquez might be one year and out. If Pavano and Wright can't do better, Cashman is the one who is out. | 
