Check Out This Guy's Offseason OPS

The Mark Teixeira presser at the old stadium has just concluded, and once again the player gave credit to Cash and the recruiting work he did to land the players in pinstripes. So let's review: the Cash re-signs Marte - eh. Cash refuses to off arbitration to any of their free agents - huh? Cash trades for Swisher and Texeira the lesser - wow. Cash signs CC Sabathia - wow. Cash signs AJ Burnett - wow*. Cash signs Mark Teixeira - wow. Market proves Cash right about arbitration - phew. Cash continues playing hardball with Andy Pettitte - nice. So far it's been a truly incredible offseason for Brian Cashman. The Marte thing is neither here nor there, they had wanted him back since they traded him years ago for Enrique Wilson. He has been that rarely consistent reliever, who did pitch through the same shoulder injury Joba had when he came to the Yanks. He'll probably be pretty good as long as he's healthy. The arbitration decisions were correct. The Swisher deal was terrific and gives us a relatively inexpensive corner OF for the next few years and allows us to trade Nady if we can find something good for him. Signing Sabathia was huge.

* Now I will argue that getting AJ Burnett was pretty huge, too. Essentially, the case for not getting him was that he used to get hurt a lot and that it would probably take us out of the running for Teixeira. First, there are a lot of power pitchers who don't learn to take care of themselves till their 30's. Curt Schilling comes to mind, then leaves right away. Burnett learned a lot from Doc Halladay and seems to finally have figured out how to stay healthy and how to pitch. He lead the AL in K's. The Yanks need strikeout pitchers to take pressure off their D (which has been greatly improved so far). And as we have witnessed, signing AJ didn't preclude the Yanks from getting Mark Teixeira, who is the model of what the type of position players they should be pursuing.

Cashman has done a hell of a job so far, avoiding arbitration, getting two front line starters, and adding two patient and potent switch-hitters who have defensive value. This is going to turnout to be an historically significant offseason. Well done, Cash.