Yankees get punked by Dodgers' Jack Flaherty trade package, settle for weak reliever

Was starting pitching the New York Yankees' top need at the deadline? Not necessarily, unless they wanted to get creative and trade Nestor Cortes Jr./backfill his role with Jack Flaherty, the top rental arm on the market.

Unfortunately, the Yankees did neither of those clever things. Instead, they semi-predictably watched the Dodgers land Flaherty, a Los Angeles native, with a trade package they facilitated during the offseason. Fitting.

The assumption was, after Yusei Kikuchi cost a boatload from Houston, that the Tigers were asking for a king's ransom in exchange for Flaherty, a better pitcher on a bigger heater. Turns out? Not so much. All they wanted was Trey Sweeney, who the Yankees sent to LA in the Jorbit Vivas/Victor González trade, as well as Los Angeles' third-best catching prospect in Thayron Liranzo.

With all due respect, what are we doing here? That's directed at both the Yankees' Brian Cashman and the Tigers' Scott Harris.

Yankees trade for Enyel De Los Santos, Dodgers get Jack Flaherty for peanuts

Amid all the reports of the Yankees getting creative this year, entertaining a Cortes swap with the Cardinals, and aggressively going after Flaherty, they did what they always do: let the Dodgers handle the smart stuff.

Los Angeles got Tommy Edman and Michael Kopech in the rumored trade the Yankees were supposedly trying to fit Cortes into. Los Angeles got Flaherty for second-tier top prospects (what's the Yankees equivalent, a struggling Roderick Arias?). The Yankees? They got Mark Leiter Jr. and Enyel De Los Santos, the ex-Guardians and Padres reliever who sports a 4.46 ERA on the season. That's not quite Keynan Middleton/Spencer Howard, when you factor in Jazz Chisholm, but it's a far cry from what was promised.

And if they'd never traded Sweeney to the Dodgers in the first place -- 13 homers, .761 OPS in the hitter-friendly PCL -- then perhaps this deal goes the other way. Fitting.