"Underwhelming"
By rshellman
Yes, "Underwhelming." That's how Dan Graziano, Newark Star-Ledger writers and "Yankee Notebook" author categorizes the potential tradebait the Yankee farm system can offer in the Randy Johnson bidding war. Of course, the Evil Empire could trade any one of their position players for the Big Unit and still be deadly. (After all, they are the first team in MLB history to have eight players with ten or more homers at the break.) But us Yankee haters can at least take comfort in the fact that Georgie has exhausted his minor league system and hasn't had a World Series in a few years to show for it.
A glimpse at various baseball columns in print and on the net shows that the Angels, Cubs, Red Sox, and Yankees are in the hunt for Johnson. Most seem to agree that the Yankees don't have the minor leaguers to attract Arizona attention and that the favorite might be Anaheim, although they have publicly denied this. The Red Sox may be in the position to have to block Johnson from going to the Yankees, but given their distance from first place, they may be content with aiming for the wild card (as they should have been all year) and save themselves 16 million dollars. If the Angels win the prize, the ALCS should be pretty good, but the Boston Globe sports lead will be the Patriots.
Graziano's article: http://www.nj.com/yankees/ledger/index.ssf?/base/sports-2/108996698219110.xml
