a seasonal no-lofts diversion is not about that (this) season

but it does involve the shortest day of the year

Let others divert with visions of sugar plums, etc, today is the shortest day of the year, which means it is the darkest day of the year, which means that Manhattan Loft Guy will offer a diversion of the season based on darkness. The season is, of course, baseball, and the darkness is, of course, the coming tragedy (farce?) known as the New York Yankees 2014 season, followed by the New York Yankees 2015 season, followed by the New York Yankees 2016 season, followed by the New York Yankees 2017 season, followed, perhaps, by hope.

Rany Jazayeril does his typically superb job of baseball analysis in this piece (The New Normal) this week on Grantland, with this telling sub-head:

Robinson Cano and Mariano Rivera are gone. Derek Jeter is old. It’s time to accept that 2013 wasn’t a fluke: The Yankees aren’t good, and they aren’t getting better.

I’ve been saying the same thing for a while. Stuck with big contracts that will vastly overpay aging (former) stars for another few years, the Yanks just don’t have many options. The minor league system would have produced somebody (anybody) (Bueller?) in 2013 if there was anyone who could contribute at the major league level. And the free agent game has changed, dramatically. In a Rany nutshell:

But the dramatic increase in revenue throughout the game has made it possible for even small-market teams to sign their best young players to long-term deals well before those players reach free agency, meaning that by the time they do hit the open market, they’re in their early 30s and declining instead of being in their late 20s and peaking.

In other words, those cupboards are bare. In the meantime, you’ve got nothing to trade, so that’s another bare cupboard.

Pass the eggnog. Then the whiskey.