Intern Bill is thrilled the Yankees got Nick Swisher on the cheap.

Late Wednesday, the New York Yankees acquired OF/1B Nick Swisher from the Chicago White Sox for INF Wilson Betemit, SP Jeff Marquez and another minor leaguer.

The move gives NY a potential 1B in the event they are not available to acquire Mark Teixeira via free agency, or a very good (and relatively inexpensive) corner OF option. The White Sox get a versatile infielder who is still arbitration eligible and might be a replacement level option at 3B and two guys who will probably never be impact players.

Net/net, this trade is robbery of White Sox GM Kenny Williams by Yankees GM Brian Cashman. Nick Swisher was a guy who two years ago hit 36 home runs and got on base at a 38 percent rate. Williams and Chicago’s manager Ozzie Guillen decided to not only put Swisher, a lousy defender, in centerfield, but also put him at the top of the order. Naturally, he performed miserably; his coach hated him, and he was effectively benched for the last part of the season. So in one down year (and some might say “unlucky”) where he was admittedly one of the lesser players in baseball, they sell him off for 10 cents on the dollar for guys who aren’t even good. To top it off, Bill James says that Swisher should rebound this year. Atrocious trade.

Now Ozzie Guillen is saying he wants “younger” and “faster” players, which is spooky enough in itself. Between this, the scouting fiasco that left their farm system full of damaged goods, and the rise of the Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins, the days of the Southsiders as division powers, playoff threats, and anything
more than a second-tier team are over.

Kenny Williams is one of the old school GMs who runs his organization on the principle of scouting, and not one of these ivy-league glorified children who think a slide rule and a spreadsheet is a viable alternative to old school baseball. It’s not. Any GM who’s tried to run their organization on mostly sabermetric principles without an egregious amount of money to spend has always ended in failure.

Williams has been right before many times, and made fools of many a pundit. But we think this trade sucks for the ChiSox. Here’s hoping Kenny proves us wrong again.