Never mind Edwar Ramirez drilling Kevin Millar an afternoon rout of the O’s, the big news out of the Bronx today concerns the Yankees coping with the loss of Jorge Posada by adding one of the great catchers of his generation, the Tigers’ Ivan Rodriguez in exchange for reliever Kyle Farnsworth. Not only is Pudge an offensive upgrade over Jose Molina, but as Was Watching is quick to point out, he can offer the rest of the Bombers all sorts of useful advice on how to lose weight.
That the Yankees favored Rodriguez over Greg Zaun isn’t very surprising, but given the Rangers’ embarrassment of riches behind the plate, there’s every chance former UT standout / current Olympian Taylor Teagarden might be dealt elsewhere by tomorrow night.
Thanks for breaking this story numbnuts.
no prob, thanks for reading it some 14 hours after it went down.
I don’t understand why all media (including bloggers) tend to report the story the same way when it is obvious that the player in question has not been that HGH-aided HOF’er in a pretty long time. Molina is better defensively (pretty much shutting down opposing running games) and though he sucketh at the plate, the other 8 guys do a really good job scoring runs. I-Rod’s offensive contributions (he of the 5 hr’s this season) wont amount to much more than what they were getting from Molina, save for the occasional base hit. What they Yankees gave up was a guy who made the bullpen so much stronger than it was last year…a guy who went from headcase to somewhat of a breakout setup man. The media keep repeating that with Marte on board, and Vera and Ramirez playing well, Farnsworth was expendable. Perhaps, but if the bullpen is a strength, why weaken it? Marte also got shelled by the O’s the other night. All of the boards I’ve read have the Yankee nerds giving Cashman a virtual blowjob over this trade. I think the trade will have minimal impact.