NEW YORK -- There's no longer any question about who won the trade. If it hadn't already been settled when Jesus Montero showed up to Seattle Mariners camp looking like Fudgie the Whale, it certainly was when he reportedly went ballistic over receiving an unwanted ice cream delivery in a minor-league dugout last week.

But even without the insanity, on performance alone it is clear that the Yankees got a steal when they acquired Michael Pineda for Montero, the supposed crown jewel of their farm system two years ago, the torn shoulder capsule and the pine tar incident notwithstanding.

And in the gloom of the final days of this Yankee season, Pineda is one of the few bright spots fans can look forward to for next year, and believe me, there aren't very many.

Next year, Derek Jeter will be gone and Alex Rodriguez will be back. Enough said?

Well, no. So will Mark Teixeira, who looks like a shell of the player the Yankees signed five years ago, in spite of nights like Thursday night. (And because of nights like Friday).

So will CC Sabathia, bad knee, sore elbow, big contract, 89 mph heater and all, with no guarantee that he will ever be an effective starter again.

So will Carlos Beltran, who is looking every bit of his 37 years old, and more, and so will Brendan Ryan, who hardly ever plays, and Brian McCann, who on many nights looks like a player who should have stayed in Atlanta.

But on the bright side, Brett Gardner will be here, and Jacoby Ellsbury, and Masahiro Tanaka (hopefully recovered from his torn UCL) and David Robertson (assuming the Yankees don't let him walk into free agency) and Dellin Betances.

And Pineda, who could well develop into the rock of this starting rotation for years to come.

With Hiroki Kuroda probably headed elsewhere, Ivan Nova coming off Tommy John surgery and the futures of Tanaka and Sabathia very much in doubt, Pineda looks like the one safe bet for the Yankees rotation next season.

Never mind the silly notion that had Pineda been healthy all season, the Yankees would be a playoff team. The truth is, instead of being 3-4 with a couple of NDs and a 1.80 ERA, Pineda would probably have been 6-12 with a full season under his belt, because the Yankees offense is still the Yankees offense.

Friday night, Pineda held the Kansas City Royals to three hits and one run -- unearned -- and lost. He has now taken the hill nine times for the Yankees this season and has yet to allow more than two runs in any of them. His team has repaid him by scoring 16 runs in those nine starts. Believe me, Koufax and Drysdale couldn't win with that kind of run "support."

On this night, in yet another of those games they can't afford to lose, the Yankees' and Royals' lines were mirror-images of one another: 1-3-0 for the Royals, 0-3-1 for the Yankees. That one in the error column, by Chase Headley, who failed to come up with a hot shot off the bat of Alcides Escobar in the third, turned into the one in the runs column for the Royals after Nori Aoki singled Escobar in.

And that was it, for the rest of the night, on both sides. James Shields pitched brilliantly -- he held the Yankees in check so well they got just three hits, and just two runners to second all night -- but Pineda matched him practically every step of the way. It's impossible to argue that Shields did not deserve to win -- he worked into the ninth inning, walked no one and struck out six -- but it is just as impossible to argue that Pineda deserved to lose.

In fact, a glance at his past performances this year is stunning: Twice now this year he has left a game trailing 1-0, twice he has left trailing 2-0. In none of his 10 starts has he allowed more than two runs, and the seven hits he allowed in his last start was the highest he had given up in 15 starts, stretching back to his days as a Mariner.

He is absolute death on right-handed hitters, who are 73-for-388 against him in his career for a batting average of .188. But it's not like lefties are having their way with him, either. Pineda has held them to a .230 BA (98-for-425), and Friday night allowed one hit, the single to Aoki, to a lefty in 11 at-bats. His control has been impeccable -- he has walked just four batters all season, in 50 IP, and struck out 34 -- and any lingering doubts about the health of his shoulder have been alleviated by a fastball that has averaged 93 mph.

"He’s been really effective since he’s come back," Joe Girardi said, "And that’s really good to see."

The manager would never say so, but he means for next year, not this one. With the right combination of circumstances, the Yankees might still sneak into at least one post-season game, but every time they let another one slip away the odds against it get greater and greater.

The likelihood is that soon, it will be time to look ahead to next season, to determine what the Yankees will need to add, and who should stay and who should go.

Chances are the 2015 Yankees will look as different from the 2014 Yankees as this year's team does from last year's. And of course, there will be plenty of players you will wish were not Yankees who still will be.

But on the other side of the coin, Pineda will still be here. If you're looking for a bright spot out of this increasingly dark season. That's not a bad place to start.

Quick turnaround: It was a rapid fall from grace for Headley and Teixeira, the two heroes of Thursday night's game who became Friday's goats. Teixeira, who struck out in all three of his at-bats against Shields, did not appear in the postgame clubhouse, but Headley did, and patiently answered every question about the third-inning play that turned out to be the decisive moment of the game.

"A hard-hit groundball. I got down but it kicked up over my glove," Headley said. "I watched it a few times. Technique-wise there’s probably not a whole lot I could have done different. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch it. It’s a play that I’d like to make, but it just didn’t happen.”

Headley has played a better than average third base since coming to the Yankees in July, but this hot shot seemed to skip on him and, he said, hit the outside of the thumb of his glove rather than settling into the pocket.

"I moved my feet, got to it and tried to reach out and snag it and it went up instead of staying on the ground and it got over my glove," he said. "That’s the nature of the game. It’s obviously disappointing when it happens, but I can live with it when I feel like I put myself in a good position to make the play. Obviously, it’s frustrating. I don’t want it to sound like I’m not disappointed, but on the same token, if it’s something I did mechanically wrong, that tends to bug me more than the ones that are tough plays that evade your glove. It sucks that that happened. I wish it hadn’t. but there’s not a whole lot you can do about it after it does."

Lights out in the pen: For the second straight game, the Yankee relievers were excellent. Tonight it was Dellin Betances and David Robertson each throwing perfect innings with two strikeouts. Betances' two K's gave him 124 in 82 innings this year, passing Goose Gossage (122 in 134 1/3 IP in 1978) for the second-most strikeouts by a reliever in Yankees history. Any idea who's first? Mariano Rivera, of course, with 130 K's in 107 2/3, a mark that with 23 games left seems well within Betances' reach.