Ken Davidoff's baseball insider

It had to have been no more than 48 hours after the Yankees' 2006 season ended. I was chatting with a stunned Yankees official (there was no other kind of Yankees official, at the time), and the person lamented, "Why did both Sheffield and Matsui have to get healthy in time?"

For when Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui both returned from wrist injuries last September, the Yankees had such excess that they shifted Sheffield to first base and benched Melky Cabrera. The lineup chemistry that had developed the prior two months vanished, and while you could label the pitching as the top culprit in that AL Division Series loss to Detroit, the offense underachieved, as well. And Sheffield was awful at first base, to boot.

There's a lesson to be learned there. As teams search for help outside the organization, particularly when it comes to everyday players, they must make sure "the pieces of the puzzle fit," as an NL talent evaluator put it yesterday in a phone conversation.

The Milwaukee Brewers are missing their centerfielder Bill Hall, for instance, and they expressed some interest in Texas' Kenny Lofton. But what would happen to Joe Torre's nemesis Lofton upon Hall's return? The team considers such consequences.

It's a fine line. After all, the Yankees felt they needed to acquire Bobby Abreu last summer because they weren't sure whether Matsui and Sheffield would return at all last season. And Abreu provided a huge spark, helping to lead the way as the Yankees leapt over and buried the Red Sox.

The trade-off, however, was that short-lived October (and yes, to reiterate, these details wouldn't have mattered if Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson and Jaret Wright had pitched better). So it's something to contemplate.