The Futility Infielder

If you haven't had enough of the trade winds over the past couple of weeks, ESPN's Jayson Stark has a rundown on some of the players who cleared waivers since the July 31 deadline passed. Among them: the Angels' Darren Erstad and Adam Kennedy, the Rangers' Rafael Palmeiro, the Mariners' Freddy Garcia, the Expos' Livan Hernandez, the Cubs' Antonio Alfonseca, and the Yanks' Sterling Hitchcock. These players, by virtue of clearing waivers, can now be traded to anybody.

Stark runs down the waivers strategy, step by step, in a handy sidebar. The most interesting part is this: "Virtually every player in the major leagues will be placed on waivers this month, whether a team intends to trade that player or not. If nothing else, the sheer volume of names can at least disguise players whom clubs do want to sneak through so they can be dealt." So you can imagine, for example, the Yanks waiving Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, and Derek Jeter alongside Armando Benitez, in an effort to sneak Benitez through. Had anybody claimed Giambi, for example, the Yanks would have pulled him back, ending any possiblity of trading him. Interesting stuff.

Speaking of Benitez, the Yanks won Round One of that trade on Friday night. Jeff Nelson, who struggled with some jitters in his first appearance on Thursday, blew away the M's in the eighth on Friday. With his frisbee slider working like it was 2000 all over again, he struck out the side -- Ichiro, Willie Bloomquist, and Bret Boone -- to protect an 8-7 lead in a wild, see-saw game. The 52,792 fans at Yankee Stadium roared to the familiar sight of Nelson pumping his fists at the end of the inning. Perfectly following the script, Benitez came out of the pen immediately after to pitch the Yankee eighth. Though Mondo looked loose -- even grinning a bit as the crowd booed his entry -- he demonstrated why the Yanks were wary of him as he yielded a run on two hits. That gave Mariano Rivera a bit of breathing room as he pitched the first scoreless ninth in his past four attempts. He even struck out Edgar Martinez, who'd owned him to the tune of .643/.706/1.286 in 16 previous plate appearances.

Coupled with the Red Sox dropping a doubleheader to the lowly Orioles, it was a great night to be a Yankee fan.

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Speaking of winds blowing, former Yankee outfielder Raul Mondesi fired some parting shots at Joe Torre and the Yanks. According to Mondi, the Yanks didn't show him respect, showed favoritism to homegrown players (such as Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada), and showed bias against players from the Dominican Republic (such as himself and Alfonso Soriano).

Like most of Mondi's swings over the past three months, this was a complete whiff. Raul took issue with Soriano being moved up and down the lineup when he's been slumping while Giambi and Posada stayed put, hitting ahead of poor little Raul, who was stuck in the eighth slot for a good portion of the season. Never mind the fact that even during their slumps, those two players' ability to take a walk now and then kept their OPBs near their career marks and probably higher than Raul's. Never mind the fact that a huge chunk of the Yankees' success over the past several years is founded on Hispanic ballplayers such as Posada, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Ramiro Mendoza, Soriano, Orlando Hernandez, and others. Why would Torre have something against Dominicans and not Panamanians, Puerto Ricans or Cubans?

All in all, it's an amusingly uninformed tirade which reminds me of Ruben Sierra's comment on being traded during the '96 season ("All they care about is winning..."). The outburst illustrates exactly why Mondesi is not only a former Yankee, but a career underachiever in the major leagues.