When it comes to the Yankees-Braves trade of Javier Vazquez for Melky Cabrera, the big winner was...the Boston Red Sox.
We knew going in that Cabrera was a pine-rider for the Yankees with fourth outfielder upside. We thought Vazquez was Atlanta's best trade bait given the team's rotation depth and his non-repeatable '09 performance. That is, until he was swapped for a spare part, which could presumably have been had for a lesser light from the mound corps.
In any case, the Sox can thank Brian Cashman and Frank Wren for keeping them within five games of NY in the standings. Whereas Cabrera and his bleak.191/.287/.225 (three XBH) would simply be clogging up the dugout in the Bronx, the Braves would be pitching Vazquez and his 9.78 ERA, at least for a while. So while Cabrera is killing Atlanta's already-inept offense, he's replacing a dumpster fire on the defensive side. For the Yankees, it's subtraction by addition, since they gave up nothing to make their pitching staff worse.
Put another way, New York got something negative for nothing. They bartered a player who wasn't going to contribute, for a star, and managed to be worse off in the process.
Neither of these guys is this bad, but their prospects are pretty poor. Vazquez seems to be allergic to the Big Apple -- his previous stint in pinstripes didn't agree with his ERA either -- and Cabrera's career .378 SLG just doesn't scream "hot second half!"
So while everything else goes wrong in Beantown, they're still within striking distance of their arch-rivals, and they can thank the gods of irony for that. After all, flipping Melky for Vazquez was about as slam-dunk a trade as you could make.
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