On Friday morning, MLB.COM published an interview with Brian Cashman in which the Yankees GM praised Jesus Montero:

"People thought we were taking a step back on Montero when we got Russell Martin. We did the same thing with [Jorge] Posada. It was three or four years until we fully handed it over to him. When people saw Montero at the end of last year, they said, 'Holy cow, that's a middle-of-the-lineup bat.'

On Friday night, Jesus Montero was on his way to Seattle in a trade for one of the better young pitchers in the game:

The New York Yankees have traded top prospect Jesus Montero and right-handed pitcher Hector Noesi to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for phenom pitcher Michael Pineda and righty Jose Campos, a source told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark.

And just when you thought the killing had stopped, word came that former Dodger Hiroki Kuroda was inked to a 1-year, $10 million deal.

All this blood in just a mere couple of hours.

What does this all mean?

1. The Yankees obviously don't believe Montero can catch. This is the biggest implication of the entire trade. We specifically pointed this out after the ALDS and it turns out our assessment of the organization's opinion was correct.

If Montero can catch, this trade very likely doesn't happen. It's incredibly rare to find Montero's bat at the catcher position. As a DH, he's easier to replace.

2. In a heartbeat, the Yankees went from having an inadequate starting rotation to possessing a very good one -- Pineda and Kuroda are two big additions.

In his rookie season last year at age 22, Pineda posted the following:
171 IP, 3.42 FIP, 3.53 xFIP, 3.4 WAR, 9.11 K/9, 2.89 BB/9, 3.15 K/BB

It's very unusual for a young pitcher to strike out that many people, while having such excellent command.

The 6'7" righthander does not fit the mold of the groundball-types the Yankees have preferred recently. He only had a 36.4% GB rate in 2011, which can be haunting in Yankee Stadium. However, his peripherals against LHB were solid, as noted by his 3.49 FIP / 3.82 xFIP splits. Hopefully, this will help combat the short porch.

Kuroda is straight disciplined, Miyagi-style. Over the last 3 seasons, Kuroda has averaged 7.10 K/9, 2.11 BB/9, 3.36 K/BB, 3.54 FIP, 3.52 xFIP, and a 47.6% GB rate. He's an above-average pitcher and a very nice pick-up, no doubt.

3. While nearly everyone came up with excuses for the front office when they thought the rotation would be Sabathia/Nova/Burnett/Hughes/Garcia, it turns out all the ballwashing was for nothing. It's ok to drink something else besides Kool-Aid.

4. With the signing of Kuroda, the Steinbrenners siphoned off a sliver of the club's monster revenue stream. With the pitchers that were available on the free agent market, there was no reason why this shouldn't have happened. Obvious upgrades were available.

Who said Friday the 13th was unlucky?

“Our club is pretty set, except [we want to] shore up the back of the rotation,” Cashman said.

This follows comments he made on Friday:

Again, I expect it to be CC, A.J., Hughes, Nova, and the rest of it is going to come from that pack below, or it will come from an outside source that we have negotiated with or trade for.”

He's joking, right? The Yankees have the resources and the need for a front of the rotation starter.

What's the deal with the rotation?

The NoMaas opinion? Bring Cash back, because in general terms...

He has made great strides with the farm system, emphasizes homegrown players, doesn't overpay for mediocre free agents, spends appropriately for elite free agents, makes very good trades, understands the bullpen should be fluid and cost-effective, is open to modern statistical evaluation, doesn't cater to legacy players, and at least voices his opinion when Randy Levine starts jizzing on the organization. Overall, he's done a very solid job.

Obviously, there have been mistakes, which is why we stated he's been a high-quality GM in "general terms." If he has an Achilles heel, it's pitching. The AJ Burnett signing was dumb. Joba Chamberlain was a completely wasted asset. The Marte and Feliciano deals should have never happened. Vazquez was a disaster. And it seems like the Yankees are often in a position of scrambling to fill out a rotation or have question marks surrounding their starters. For a team with the Yankees' resources, the rotation is often an issue. It shouldn't be.

On the aggregate though, we say "Bring Back Ca$hMoney."

It will be a shocker if Ca$hMoney doesn't return to New York.

"We have six guys who can pitch in a pennant race, period. AJ Burnett is having his typical terrible August. For whatever reason, he can't pitch in August, I don't know why. It is what it is. August is obviously not an effective month for him."

Cashman did say Electric Stuff! hasn't pitched like a #2 starter, but thinks that his recent brownouts should be discounted when evaluating his place in the rotation -- for his performance will improve once the kids pack up their Justin Bieber lunchboxes and head back to school.

Discerning NoMaas readers surely will turn a jaundiced eye toward remarks of this ilk. We are used to hearing MLB broadcasters attribute some sort of causality to statistical flukes of small sample size all the time: Josh Hamilton hits better in the daytime because his eyes are blue, Robbie Cano can't hit with runners in scoring position because he lacks mental toughness, David Ortiz is so calm in the clutch because he thinks all Japanese people look alike.

Returning to Cashman's assertion, it's easy to see why he thinks August is a cursed month for Burnett. AJ has been a Yankee since 2009 and has posted the following ERAs in August: 6.03, 7.80, 10.70. It sure seems like there must be something going on here, right?

Well, in 2010, August wasn't Burnett's worst month. In June, he made 5 starts with an 11.35 ERA. When you further examine Burnett's career, Cashman's picture of things disintegrates.

In '08, August was only Burnett's third-worst month. In '07, Burnett had his very best month of the year in August, posting a 1.63 ERA. August was also Burnett's best month in 2005, 2002, & 2000. In 2004, he somehow mustered a 2.83 ERA in August. Does this mean A.J. was an August Master early in his career but started to lose that mojo as the years rolled by? Not so fast -- in 2001, he had a 7.39 August ERA.

Is this starting to look like plain ol' random variation to you? Good, it should, and it should to Cashman as well. Burnett's career 4.33 August ERA is the highest of any month for him, but so what? One out of every 6 pitchers is going to have their worst ERA in August (there's 6 months in the baseball season). There have been 654 pitchers to pitch at least 200 innings in the last decade. We should expect 109 pitchers in that period to have August as their worst month just by random chance. A.J. Burnett is one of them.

This is a lot of digital ink to spill on a comment that Brian Cashman tossed out while taking a defensive posture at the media's typically thoughtless probing. Yet, there is a deeper lesson here. Our minds have evolved to attach a narrative to every set of events we encounter. When we see a pitcher get rocked, we look for a story that explains the poor outcome. Watch a game on TV and an MLB broadcaster will come up with a single reason for almost every bad outcome for a pitcher. Much of the time the announcers are just plain making stuff up and the numbers will contradict their assertions. Even when the stats seem to support them, it is almost always a statistical blip.

In fact, there are countless factors involved in why a pitcher might get hit hard. Some are under his control to varying degrees: his mechanics, his velocity, his location, his pitch selection. Some are not: the batter's mechanics, the batter's guess at what pitch is coming, the fielder's jump on the ball, the size and consistency of umpire's strike zone, the wind blowing in or out, the temperature at the stadium, the length of the grass....all these factors pile up on each other and tend to drown out any single reason we may come up with to explain an event.

We are all prone to this habit of illusory correlation. It is a little unnerving to hear the Yankees' General Manager so blatantly falling into this trap and professing patently silly reasons for his pitcher's performance. It is disappointing to think that such a major decision as who will be in the rotation might be made based on fundamentally unsound reasoning. We're hoping this was just a throwaway comment.

"That's just not going to happen," he said.

"We have an everyday shortstop in Derek Jeter."

Well, Derek does play shortstop nearly everyday when he's healthy.

Any plans for the weekend?

In your opinion, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is it refreshing to hear Cashman sound off? Maybe he's had enough of the inmates running the asylum and wants people to know about it? Or, should he go about it differently and not risk upsetting players? Should he just keep internal business private?

Stadium will soon be playing the Meat Puppets.