Saturday night, Ted Lilly threw a one-hitter.

You probably already knew that.

It was the 58th one-hitter thrown by a Yankees pitcher, but just the first one-hitter the Yankees lost.

Maybe you already knew that, too.

	Ted Lilly Starting Pitcher New York Yankees Profile
	2001 SEASON STATISTICS GM W-L IP H BB/K ERA 5 0-2 20 7 3/23 1.35

But did you know that Ted Lilly's full name is Theodore Roosevelt Lilly?

If find this interesting only because while it was once common to name children after Presidents -- Grover Cleveland Alexander being one noted example, Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish being another -- it's not so common any more. I once had a friend, the son of Korean immigrants, named Abraham Lincoln Lim, but I can't think of any current ballplayers with Presidential names (no, Richie Sexson's middle name is not "Nixon," nor is Jimmy Anderson's "Carter").

Here's something else you might not know, unless you're a Yankees fan, an Expos fan, or a prospect hound ... Teddy Roosevelt Lilly is not a product of the vaunted Yankees farm system. So how did the Yankees shake a pitching prospect loose from another, presumably less-wealthy franchise?

The short answer is that Jeffrey Loria doesn't run a baseball franchise any better than he could sail a supertanker up the Hudson River to Albany. When he took over the Expos after the 1999 season, New York art dealer Loria's two big moves were 1) sign Graeme Lloyd, who had recently spent two-plus seasons with the Yankees, and 2) trade for Hideki Irabu, who had just spent two-plus seasons with the Yankees. The philosophy being, apparently, that if you can't beat the Yankees, you can always acquire their cast-off players (the Royals subscribe to this brilliant philosophy, too).

Anyway, those wonderful ex-Yankees were added to Montreal's roster in plenty of time for the 2000 season. That season, the Expos paid approximately $30 million to the players on their major-league roster. Of that approximately $30 million, $3 million went to Lloyd and $4.1 million went to Irabu. And the return on that investment? Lloyd had an unfortunate year, as his wife died in April and he had shoulder surgery. He missed the entire season ... and by not pitching a single inning, Lloyd was better than Irabu, who started 11 games for the Expos and went 2-5 with a 7.24 ERA, thus earning the nickname "Headache-y I-rob-you."

Lloyd made another $3 million last season, and this time the Expos did get a return on their investment. Not a large return -- nine wins, yes, but also five losses and a 4.63 ERA -- but a return nonetheless. Unfortunately, while Irabu's salary dropped to $2.5 million, this time the Expos didn't get any wins at all from him; just a couple of losses.

Ancient history, right? Loria's been given another franchise to destroy, and anyway Expos fans don't have to worry about Irabu any longer. (Lloyd is back, earning another $3 million doing a job that any number of minor leaguers could do.) But of course the punch line here is that the Montreal Expos, currently tied for first place, would be even better off if they hadn't traded Jake Westbrook, Christian Parker, and Ted Lilly to the Yankees for Irabu.

At the time, Lilly was coming off a good Triple-A season, in which he'd gone 8-5 with a 3.84 ERA for the Ottawa Lynx. That winter, John Sickels wrote, "Given some adjustment time, Lilly will be a good pitcher, though not an All-Star."

Generally, the Yankees are not the team you want play for if you need adjustment time, for obvious reasons, and Lilly spent most of the 2000 season in Columbus, for whom he didn't pitch particularly well. There was minor elbow surgery prior to that season, too, and the combination of injury and so-so performance led Sickels to drop Lilly's "grade" from a B in his 2000 scouting book to a B- in his 2001 book.

Fortunately for Lilly, though, his elbow came around and the Yankees spent most of 2001 short a couple of starters. He spent most of last season in the rotation, starting 21 games (and relieving in five others). Lilly didn't pitch particularly well -- five wins and six losses, accompanied by a 5.37 ERA -- but there were signs of quality, particularly a strikeout ratio (112 in 120.2 innings) that compared with those of Mike Mussina and Roger Clemens. And as every good little amateur sabermetrician knows, strikeout ratio is one of the best barometers of future success.

But this is the Yankees, and young pitchers with 5.73 career ERA's don't pitch for the Yankees unless somebody gets hurt. Andy Pettitte got hurt. And now the Yanks have a fifth starter with a one-hitter on his brief resume and a 1.35 ERA for the season.

It's unlikely that Ted Lilly will ever throw another one-hitter, let alone a no-hitter. But he's had the benefit of adjustment time, and he will be a good pitcher. And so Jeff Loria's legacy will live on, even if the Expos don't.