Nady has a setback; season could be over

After playing well 2 days ago in a rehab appearance at AAA, Xavier Nady removed himself from a game yesterday after only five innings because he felt pain after he made a throw. Brian Cashman said this could be a possible "worst case scenario" and Nady would need the season ending surgery that he was trying to avoid.

This could not be worse for the Yankees. You all know how I feel about Nady. I was the biggest "Swisher is the starter" advocate and I believe even if Nady was healthy, we all would have come to the conclusion anyway that Swisher was the better player. Remember, Swisher was slowly winning the spot after the season began and Nady had a .310 OB%, but then Nady got injured.

This affects the Yankees in more ways than one. First off, now going forward the rest of the season, their bench will be much worse. Nady is still a decent enough hitter who can hit lefties really well. Imagine our team right now minus Cody Ransom and plus a lefty smasher who can also play the outfield. The team would look a lot better.

Secondly, now last year’s trade looks like a complete bust. The Yankees gave up four prospects including Jose Tabata, Jeff Karstens who has a decent 4.80 era for the Pirates and Ross Ohlendorf who has 6 wins and a 4.75 era. I'm not saying we gave up a lot, but the Yankees lost a potential solid major league outfielder and 2 back of the rotation NL guys as well as another pitching prospect for 2 months of Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte (remember him? didn't think so), not the best return they could have gotten.

Finally, because of his amazing play last year in the first half, Xavier Nady will probably be a Type A free agent after this year. His agent is Scott Boras. If Nady played a full year and stayed healthy, the Yankees could have offered him arbitration and there would be no way in the world that he would have accepted and the Yankees could have gotten 2 draft picks for losing him. (On a side note, I'm not sure if you guys know this, but the reason we have Joba Chamberlain is because the Yankees offered Tom Gordon arbitration and he declined. If not for Tom Gordon, the man who threw up in the bullpen in 2004, Joba Chamberlain would not be a Yankee. Just goes to show you how things work).

So Nady going down makes us lose a bat off the bench, makes a trade look bad and makes us lose two potential draft picks. That's a pretty big affect one man has.

With that said, maybe this just looks bad and he will rest it and he will be OK, but when the GM says it could be the worst case, that usually means it is. So what do you guys think the worst aspect of this is? The trade looking bad really does not matter; I just threw that in there for fun. Bad trades happen all the time. A bat like his would look nice off the bench, but the team has shown that they can play well without him and the Yanks could always make a trade (I am looking at you Mark DeRosa!). The biggest thing for me in all of this is the draft picks. For a team that is always losing their own picks, and may very well lose their first round pick again next year if they sign Matt Holliday, I really think that those extra draft picks could really help the team.

Update:

Well, it was the worst case scenario. Nady will have the 2nd Tommy John Surgery of his career (the first came in 2001). Obviously he is done for the year and his 2010 season is in jeopardy as well.