Cashman: Johan's not the key

Brian Cashman won the popular vote last night in what he joked beforehand was the equivalent of a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama debate. The Yankee GM actually was a guest lecturer, joined onstage by his Red Sox counterpart Theo Epstein, at William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J. And the mostly partisan Yankee crowd - about 1,000 fans who paid $37 apiece and packed an auditorium to hear the rivals talk baseball - was most invigorated by Cashman's take on the possibility of pursuing Twin ace Johan Santana in a trade.

"My strong recommendation is we stick with our young pitching staff and keep it in-house," Cashman said to rousing applause. "That's my recommendation, and we've fought hard to take one step back to take two giant steps forward." Continue