I came across this article by George King in the Post from this past Saturday again today through Buster Olney’s column (Insider), and re-reading it through the prism of realizing that the Yankees probably won’t make any upgrades to the roster this winter due to their self-imposed tight budget, it does a great job of encapsulating why I’m getting increasingly irritated at the information coming out of the Bronx these days. It’s one thing to decide to cut payroll with some $50 million in additional profit being dangled in your face, but what the Yankees’ front office is doing with respect to talking to the media sounds a lot like double talk to me, and as the market has played out since the winter meetings, certain things I had assumed based on these statements didn’t exactly come to pass. Consider:

Brian Cashman departed the Winter Meetings Thursday not optimistic about signing a free agent or making a trade to upgrade the starting rotation.

According to the general manager, progress wasn’t made yesterday, a day after he admitted, “I am ready to rock and roll. The Yankees are open for business.’’

The problem here isn’t so much the statement itself in isolation, it comes when you try to fit them into the bigger picture of offseason news. On the one hand, Cashman says the Yankees are “open for business,” and we continue to hear that they’re constantly looking for pitching, but then you turn around and they’re disavowing interest in every available free agent, and it’s increasingly clear that there’s simply nothing available on the trade market if the Yankees aren’t willing to part with Jesus Montero or Manny Banuelos. These two realities are mutually exclusive. If the Yankees aren’t willing to pay the market price for an upgrade, then by definition they are not seriously looking to upgrade the roster, any more than I’m seriously trying to buy my wife a European sports car for Christmas.

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Jon Heyman reports that Cincinnati has signed former Yankees’ first round pick Andrew Brackman to a one year deal at the major league minimum salary. Brackman entered the season as one third of the Yankees much ballyhooed “Killer B’s” trio of pitching prospects, but an absolutely abysmal season in Triple-A pushed him out of the top prospect picture altogether. The Yankees released Brackman as part of a contractual obligation when they declined to exercise an option on the pitcher for 2012.

For what it’s worth, I’m a little puzzled by the whole mess. For one thing, I don’t really get why the Yankees would cut bait with Brackman now. His season was terrible, to be sure, but considering how highly he was thought of going into the year, and the fact that the option wouldn’t cost that much money if Brackman were in the minors, it seems like one more year wouldn’t have hurt anything. For another, I don’t really understand why they would agree to a clause requiring them to release Brackman when he’s so far away from free agency in the first place.

Oh well, it’s nothing to get all that broken up about I suppose. It just strikes me as strange.

Remember those days not all that long ago when the Yankees’ scouting department was high on the talents of Yu Darvish, and of course the Yankees wouldn’t be so irrational as to allow their experience with Kei Igawa to have anything to do with how they evaluate a different pitcher from the same country? Well, maybe not, if this report from Mark Feinsand and Bill Madden of the Daily News to be believed. Let’s take this in turn, because there’s a lot of different angles to sift through.

When it comes to Yu Darvish and the Yankees, experience matters.

First, there’s the Yankees’ experience with Japanese pitchers, most notably Kei Igawa, the $46 million bust who won two games in 2007-08 before spending the past three seasons in the minors.

I’m not even going to entertain this, that’s how dumb it is.

More importantly, however, is Darvish’s experience — or lack thereof — in the majors. According to a source, the Yankees are likely to submit a bid for Darvish before Wednesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, but it isn’t expected to be enough to win the negotiating rights for the 25-year-old righthander.

A couple of points. One, this is what you have scouts for. Most of the baseball players in the world do not, in fact, have any experience playing at the Major League level, and that generally does not keep MLB franchises, including the Yankees, from evaluating them, putting a price tag on them, and acquiring them.

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The deadline to tender contracts to arbitration eligible players is tonight, meaning that anyone with enough service time to be eligible for arbitration but without enough service time to file for free agency who is not offered a contract by their team will become a free agent. The Yankees have six such players in Boone Logan, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Russell Martin, Brett Gardner, and David Robertson, and as you’d expect each of them will be tendered an offer by the Yankees, meaning that each of them will be back in pinstripes next season. The Yankees will also tender offers to all of their pre-arbitration players, but that gets less attention than the players who may be in line for arbitration raises.