Baseball's New Landscape

And it isn't just the Nationals who have witnessed the new paradigm since last summer. It seems relatively clear now that the days of the blockbuster superstar-for-prospects deal at the trade deadline -- think: David Cone from the Blue Jays to the Yankees in 1995, or Johnson from the Mariners to the Astros in 1998 -- are over.

Of the 35 trades made last July, only seven involved a player ranked among an organization's top 10 prospects, and only two of those prospects were ranked in the top five.

This winter, a few more top prospects, including pitchers, changed hands. Most prominently, the Houston Astros sent No. 1 prospect Jason Hirsh in a package of players to Colorado for veteran pitcher Jason Jennings -- but that deal was widely criticized in Houston and elsewhere.

And in another notable trade last November, the Detroit Tigers shipped three pitching prospects, including two top 10s -- Humberto Sanchez (rated No. 6) and Kevin Whelan (No. 10) -- to acquire Sheffield from . . .

The New York Yankees.

That trade, like the similar one two months later that sent Johnson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for three prospects, represented a complete 180-degree turn for baseball's onetime sugar daddies. The Yankees used to trade away their prospects for aging stars, not the other way around.

According to Cashman, the Yankees' shift in philosophy began in May 2005, when Cashman responded to a public challenge from owner George Steinbrenner -- irked by the team's slow start, he said the responsibility for fixing the team rested with Cashman -- by insisting upon total power over the team's baseball operations, which to that point had been split between New York and Steinbrenner's Tampa headquarters.

"I told him," Cashman said, " 'If it's up to me to fix it, I'm going to do it my way.' "

Soon, the team had called up two top prospects, second baseman Robinson Cano and pitcher Chien-Ming Wang. It promoted another minor leaguer, pitcher Aaron Small, and made a minor deal for pitcher Shawn Chacon. "We didn't do anything drastic," Cashman said, "and we ended up winning the division."

When the Yankees did make a big trade last year, for Bobby Abreu, they did so without sacrificing any of their top prospects. And when they have signed free agents -- such as lefty reliever Mike Myers and starter Andy Pettitte -- they have carefully waited until their former teams failed to offer them arbitration, which means the Yankees did not have to give up draft picks to sign them.

In the meantime, the Yankees' payroll has actually decreased in each of the past two years, from a high of around $204 million to about $175 million -- still the highest in the game, but moving ever closer to the rest of the pack. Steinbrenner may appreciate that, but Cashman's plan will never be seen as a success by The Boss until it produces the Yankees' first World Series title since 2000.

"Those are more examples of what I've been publicly saying for two years," Cashman said. "We're going to build from within. We're going to lower our payroll, get flexible. We haven't been big-game hunters on the free agent market. But at the same time we're going to continue trying to win championships. People heard what I said, but I don't think they really believed it."

But folks believe Cashman now, after a winter in which the Yankees moved into a bizarro world -- where they kept their top prospects, dumped high-salaried stars and telegraphed to the rest of baseball that the Sugar Daddy Era officially was over.