Alwright It's the Royals

but you still gotta like Johnson's 7 inning 1 hit performance, with 8 strikeouts, especially since of the last few winning teams to go into KC--the Twins, Chicago, Boston, the Tigers--the Yankees are the only ones to win the series. Johnson's been gradually getting better, sometimes with dominant stuff, sometimes winning without it. Either way, without pumping up anyone's hopes, you can't say it augurs ill for the post-season.

Even playing relatively well, the Yankees can't seem to tear off a winning streak, but at least they are now winning series--against both good teams (Twins, Tigers) and bad (Royals)--with regularity.

On BT, Buster Olney pointed out that Boston's trades have not worked out well this year. I would say that's an understatement. Actually, I think there's a case to be made that right now Theo Epstein is the worst GM in baseball. For someone who claims to protect his prospects, he obviously gave away too much in the Beckett-Lowell deal. Lowell is near done I expect and Beckett, 5 years on, looks like he'll never become what Peter Gammons fervently and unreasonably believed--a perennial CY Young winner. Meanwhile Anabell Sanchez, of tonight's no-hitter, has been great in Florida, certainly much better than all the arms Theo chose to keep--Lester, DelCarmen, Hansen--and Hanley Ramirez is a perennial all-star SS of the future, certainly head and shoulders above Padriok or whatever his name that Boston decided to retain instead.

Then there is the mediated Renterria for Crisp deal, which dispensed with a bat the Red Sox badly needed for a player to replace Johnny Damon, whom they never should have let go in the first place.

But if Damon was Theo's highest profile blunder, the worst blunder came as a result of his one good deal, the Mirabelli for Loretta trade. After they decided Josh Bard couldn't catch Wakefield's knuckleball, they sent him with Cla Meredith to SD to retrieve the mediocre Mirabelli, whom they flew in with great fanfare just in time for a Wakefield start. Of course, generally speaking Bard is better, I mean much better, as well as much younger than Mirabelli and Meredith has proven to be a bullpen ace--he's been nearly Papelbon good. Meanwhile of course the ancient and decrepit Wakefield has spent most of the season on the shelf, robbing Mirabelli of his already meager raison d'etre. Bard was supposed to be their catcher of the future, after they gave up Shoppack in the ill-fated Crisp deal (that's Renterria and Shoppack sacrificed to their unwillingness to pay Damon about 10M more over 4 years). Instead they wound up with a catcher without any real purpose in the present. And Meredith would have made all the difference in their bullpen, easing their overreliance on the elderly Timlin and obviating their continued fantasies about Keith Foulke's imminent effectiveness.

If one considers these disasters in aggregate, perhaps the worst move Boston made was begging the boy-wonder to return from self-imposed exile. Perhaps they should have considered that the core of their 2004 championship team--Damon, Ramirez, Martinez, Timlin, Varitek, Nixon, Lowe--all predated Theo's arrival, and that the man he calls his mentor, Billy Beane (who also let Damon go), has never, for all the hype surrounding him, ever won anything at all in Oakland, no pennants, no world championships, no trips to the ALCS, while his rivals in Anaheim or LA or Capistrano have done all of the above.

As far as I can tell, you can win spending money--Yankees, Sox, Angels, Braves--you can win not spending money--Marlins, Padres, Twins--but you probably aren't going to win just talking about money--Oakland.