Afternoon Baseball

Alex Belth, the Bronx Banter co-author, once again demonstrates that he's a great baseball writer and observer with his SI.com column on offseason moves. He lists the retaining of Brian Cashman as one of his five moves that he liked.

He's absolutely right. Cashman is not perfect, but he's the best possible GM the Yankees could have at this point in time. Giving him actual GM powers was a good idea, too.
After the first-round loss, I recapped their season, focusing a great deal on whether they fixed 2004's problems and what they needed to fix for 2006.

Re-signing Cashman, obviously, solves the problem a vacancy would have created -- especially when trying to pursue someone like Johnny Damon (or even re-signing Hideki Matsui).
Girardi didn't stay, but you can't blame him, and the replacements seem solid. The Yankees followed my advice on re-signing players pretty well: "Re-sign Matsui, Small, Chacon. Don't re-sign Tino, Ruben, or Bernie. Think about finding a Gordon replacement, just in case."
Other than bringing back Bernie, they made the tough choices and the right choices.

They did go after Damon, which I expressly warned against, but I've come around. Besides, I was hoping in my mind that the Twins would try to dump Torii Hunter.
They still haven't fixed A-Rod's psyche, but miracles may require a priest, not a baseball man.

Overall, though, when you throw in the bullpen upgrades (on paper), the Yankees have solved many of their problems for 2006. Are they vulnerable? Yes. But they aren't leaking through gaping holes like all of last year. The attitude should be, barring any WBC injuries, get out there, win games, and maybe tweak things with a trade.
That's the standard operating procedure for winning ballclubs.
If that doesn't sound so extraordinary, keep in mind that last year's attitude was: Hope a bunch of longshots turn out OK, or that we just slug the hell out of the ball because we have no one to give in a trade. And oh yeah, we'll definitely need some new players halfway through.

Maybe I'm just an optimistic fool. But hey, it's January. Now's the time.