Go figure. The Yankees hand out $450 million in contracts to CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira in the offseason and yet the current leader for the most impactful newcomer wearing pinstripes is a utility man the White Sox couldn't trade away fast enough.

I mentioned this in our earlier post on April MVPs, but if you were to look at the Yankees roster and pick out a player (and not just a new arrival) who has made the biggest difference in the Bronx so far in 2009, it'd probably be Nick Swisher.

It's hard to believe (especially if you're buying into the resurrection of Robinson Cano), but once you see the otherworldly stat line that Swisher has put up thus far, it's not hard to make an argument.

To recap: He's hitting .312/.430/.714! and leads the Yankees in runs (21), homers (7), doubles (8) and NYSE bell ringings (1). He's had a game in which he's homered from both sides of the plate, pitched an inning when summoned by manager Joe Girardi and has already filled five positions for the Yankees this season. If you're looking at intangibles, he's already being embraced like a New York original after nearly a decade of the Yankees being a team of 25 faceless corporations. (In short, he's been almost exactly what I predicted he'd be for the White Sox before the clubhouse proved too small for him and Ozzie Guillen.)

Now, of course, I'm not stupid enough to believe that Swisher is going to continue slugging at a .714 clip (he's a career .461 guy) or that Sabathia and Burnett are going to be as inconsistent as they've been or that Teixeira will finish the year hitting .200/.367/.371.

But even if Swisher doesn't maintain even half of his production for the rest of the season, he's already made a huge impact on the 12-10 Yankees, helping carry the water while the above guys are figuring things out, while Chien-Ming Wang was pitching and while Alex Rodriguez made his comeback toward the majors. Not bad for a trade afterthought.

So, yeah, on May 1, 2009, I'll stand behind this and say that the following fact is true: New York's best offseason acquisition wasn't obtained by coughing up a multi-year contract worth millions of dollars, but rather by sending Wilson Betemit west to the Windy City.

Who knew?