Since the Yankees near trades for Cliff Lee and Dan Haren recently fell through, I decided to try coming up with a list of starting pitchers I would be interested in trading for before the deadline.  The caveat for me is that I don’t think the Yankees need a starter as they got 24 starts out of Chad Gaudin, Sergio Mitre and Chien-Ming Wang last year, and when Phil Hughes was in the rotation he was pretty poor.  Despite that, the Yankees were the class of baseball last year in both the regular season and the playoffs.  Yet this team, already leading the majors in wins, can’t survive losing Pettitte for 6-7 starts?  I don’t agree.

The trade proposals for Lee and Haren did two things.  In Lee’s case it’s get one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball and make yourselves the undoubted favorite to win the World Series.  It also gave you the inside track to sign him long term in the offseason.  In Haren’s case it was get a legitimate top 20 pitcher who is signed for 3 years to a reasonable contract who can help you both short term and long term.  These deals made sense, unlike trading for Ted Lilly or someone of his ilk.

So how many other starting pitchers who are (even slightly) available would I want the Yankees to trade for right now?  After scouring every roster in the majors, I have come up with one definite and two maybes.  That’s it.  The definite is Zack Greinke.  He would help the team both short term and long term, though I do not advocate trading for him as the Royals would have to completely win the trade. Any acquisition of Greinke would be a total overpay and not worth it in the long term.  It’s not necessary.  The two others I would consider would be Chad Billingsley and Ricky Nolasco, but I don’t think they would provide much in the short term.  Neither of them are having great years and there would certainly be a NL to AL transition.  While I would like to have either of them long term, I wouldn’t trade for them right now as the cost would likely be too high, and the payoff for 2010 wouldn’t be great.

Long story short: The Yankees are fine with their starting pitching.  The shots they took at Lee and Haren made sense, but those two were truly special scenarios.  Whether it’s Mitre, Moseley or a minor leaguer, the Yankees can survive this.