Jets are in AFC Championship Game, Yankees are Desperate, Yankee Fans Should Worry.

My name is Mike Lupica and I am a hack:

"The signing of Rafael Soriano by the Yankees this week produced as surreal a Yankee press conference as the one a million years ago when George Steinbrenner fired Dick Howser and tried to make it sound like practically a promotion."

It was not really a million years ago. That is a middle-school-level rhetorical device known as hyperbole.


"Maybe Soriano will work out great for the Yankees, and there will be nights when he and Mo Rivera lock down games from the seventh inning on.

Maybe Soriano will be worth the closer money the desperate Yankees threw at him, and be Mike Stanton and Jeff Nelson all by himself."

The Yankees are not desperate.

Put another way, even if the Yankees are desperate, the Soriano signing and the subsequent press conference are not evidence of this supposed desperation.

That is a middle-school-level logical device known as a tautology. Lupica is claiming the Yankees are desperate and his proof of this is using the word "desperate" to describe the Yankees.

A "desperate" move would have been trading Cano, Joba, and three draft picks for Soriano.


Also, the Yankees are not expecting Soriano to be "Stanton and Nelson all by himself." That is a middle-school-level rhetorical device knows as a false equivalency.

But if Soriano was really that good, then the "closer money" would be quite a bargain. The Yankees would have two players in one and plenty of money left over for a good starter.


"But if you are a Yankee fan, you better worry about how this all played out, because this was the week when the Yankees once again looked like they were being run by a Crack Baseball Committee out of the past."

Which Crack Committee out of the past? The one that won 4 titles in 5 years?


"Or maybe just being run by no one."

Or maybe not.

Maybe the Yankees are really being run by someone.

Maybe the Yankees missed the World Series by two wins last season and maybe the Yankees have missed the playoffs only one time since 1995.


Lupica would write this article regardless of the actions of the Yankee front office.

The Yankees would have been desperate if they had done nothing and they would have been desperate if they had signed Lee.

The Yankees were expecting to sign Lee and are waiting patiently -- not desperately -- for starting pitching depth.

For some reason, it's very important to Mike Lupica to try and make Yankee fans worried.