For the 1st 106 games of the Yankees' 2019 season, I was able to get both my blog posts and my video recaps of them done before the first pitch of the next game 104 times. I was 104-2.
For reasons that I won't get into here, I couldn't do it yesterday. I thought I could do it, but I didn't know that the game was an afternoon game.
The Yankees won it... and I don't care.
That's how much I have had it with Brian Cashman.
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The job of the general manager of the New York Yankees is to help the New York Yankees win the American League Pennant and the World Series. It is not to help
other teams win Pennants.
In 2016, in the week before the trading deadline, Cashman traded away 4 good players for a slew of prospects, the best of whom thus far have been Gleyber Torres, with a million-dollar bat and a 5-cent glove; and Clint Frazier, with a million-dollar bat and a 5 -cent head.
Within those 4 trades, 2 of the teams involved, the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, faced each other in the World Series, the Cubs winning it in 7 games. These are teams that almost never win Pennants: The Cubs hadn't won one in 71 years, while the Indians had won just 2 in the preceding 61 years. Yet Cashman helped them win.
In 2017, the Detroit Tigers traded Justin Verlander to the Houston Astros at the deadline. Cashman could have made a trade, giving away his precious prospects. He didn't, and the Astros won the Pennant, only their 2nd in their 56-season history; and winning the World Series, something they'd never done before.
Don't tell me that Verlander (or any other player) had a no-trade clause: Throw enough money at a problem, and that money will talk, and people will listen. He could have told Verlander that you can win a World Series in Houston, but you can become a legend in New York. It's why Reggie Jackson turned down Montreal and San Diego in November 1976: He wanted to be a star, even a legend, in New York. It's why Roger Clemens asked Toronto to trade him to the Yankees in 1999.
Reggie knew what becoming a legend in New York had done for Babe Ruth, who had played elsewhere. He knew what it had done for Frank Gifford, Joe Namath and Willis Reed, who had been stars in college, but playing pro ball in New York made them icons. Clemens knew what it had done for them, and for Reggie, and, since Reggie, for Mark Messier, who would never have become what he became in New York had he stayed in Edmonton.
In basketball, it's why LeBron James left Cleveland twice, first for Miami, then for Los Angeles. It's why Kevin Garnett left Minnesota for Boston, why Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left Milwaukee for Los Angeles. In football, it's why Namath turned down St. Louis, the NFL team that drafted him, for New York, the AFL team that drafted him. And it's why the Manning family engineered Eli away from San Diego.
In hockey, it's why Wayne Gretzky went from Edmonton to Los Angeles, and why his former teammate Messier went from Edmonton to New York. (It worked for Messier, but only partly for Gretzky. Which may be why Gretzky then went to New York, and Messier, after being in Vancouver for a while, came back, and they became teammates again. It didn't work, as they were too old and banged-up.
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Going into this year's trading deadline, the Yankees had a very solid lead in the American League Eastern Division, but the starting pitching has been very shaky the last 2 weeks. We needed at least 1 more good starting pitcher.
Cashman now says we weren't close to trading for any of them. And the Astros got Zack Greinke from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Now, the Astros have a potential playoff rotation: Verlander, Greinke, and Gerrit Cole; while the Yankees have to find 3 guys out of Masahiro Tanaka, Domingo German, James Paxton, J.A. Happ, an old CC Sabathia, and, if either of them can come back from injury, Luis Severino or Jordan Montgomery.
Does anybody really think that the Yankees rotation can match up with that of the Western Division-leading Astros? With that of the Central Division-leading Minnesota Twins, the other likely Division champion? How about with the Tampa Bay Rays, the likely Wild Card winners? Or how about if the Boston Red Sox somehow managed to cheat their way back into it? Can the Yankees match up with any of them, as currently constituted?
If you believe they can, then I quote Stephen A Smith: "Stay off the weed!"
Trading prospects, and maybe a washed-up veteran, for one or two guys who can win you the Pennant this year worked for the Yankees many times from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s, until the farm system finally dried up, and there were no prospects left to trade.
Cashman has learned the wrong lesson, that of 1965 rather than that of the years before. Prospects are his One Ring: He wants the precioussss. He won't give it up to get the one player who could win the World Series this year.
And, the thing is, this was supposed to be the season! This was supposed to be The Year! Capital T, capital Y! Cashman made those moves in 2016 as a salary dump. He sacrificed a chance at the World Championship in 2016, 2017, and 2018, so that, in 2019, when several big contracts had come off the books, he would be free to spend some more money, and still stay under the luxury-tax threshold. By then, all those prospects, or at least enough of them to make a difference, would be ready to go, and help the Yankees make a legitimate run at Title 28.
Unfortunately, it looks like Cashman has given the Yankees the same strategy for the rest of 2019 that they had for the previous 2 seasons: Score as many runs as possible, and hope that it's enough. It hasn't worked out that way, has it? When the opposing pitcher just plain shuts you down, you have to have a pitcher who's even better than that. And Cashman refuses to get one.
And Cashman is not at all accountable. Hal and Hank Steinbrenner are not going to fire him, the way their father would have as early as 2013, certainly no later than 2016.
Today is August 1. If there are no postponements, and the World Series gets that far, Game 7 will be played on October 30.
These next 3 months absolutely must be the referendum on Brian Cashman as general manager of the New York Yankees. If, on the morning of November 1, if not sooner, the Yankee players are not brushing ticker tape (or whatever we use in place of ticker tape these days) out of their hair on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, then, by sundown on November 1, Cashman better be cleaning out his office.
1 Pennant in 16 years. 1 World Championship in 19 years. For many teams, that would be just fine. For the New York Yankees, with their history, with their resources? That is absolutely unacceptable.
How many more chances must Cashman be given? How many times must he be allowed to fail? To borrow a line from (admittedly, the film's villain, played by the late Sir John Hurt) Chancellor Adam Sutler in
V for Vendetta, "We are being buried beneath the avalanche of your inadequacies, Mr. Cashman!"
The Yankees have won 7 World Series in my lifetime. I shouldn't be greedy about this, certainly not for my own sake. This is not about what I want, or about what I think I "need." This is about the kids, who aren't old enough to remember 2009, let alone 1996-2000, or 1977-78 (all of which I remember), or the 1949-62 titles (which I don't).
I have 12-year-old twin nieces who know the Yankees have won a World Series in their lifetime that they don't remember. And I have a 3-year-old niece who... well, for the moment, she doesn't know that the Yankees even exist. I still have to work on her. Even if it doesn't take hold, as Phil Rizzuto's old friend Meat Loaf would say, "Two out of three ain't bad." As long as she doesn't become a Mets fan.
The Yankees' arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox, have won 4 World Series in the last 16 years. The Yankees, over that time? 1 Pennant, 1 World Series win. An absolute disgrace. We would be fired if we had done that poorly at our jobs, so why does Cashman still have his?
The season is over, and I will not do any more post-game blog posts or video Recaps. What's the point? We're not going to do it this season.
We could have. But Brian Cashman chose not to try.
Violence doesn't solve anything, but I want to slap him.
But that probably wouldn't do any good, either.
Maybe the only thing that will get him out of the Yankee GM's job is if he gets into a #MeToo scandal.
And, like a recession, that's not the kind of thing you want to hope for.
Oh well, as fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers used to say, Wait 'til next year.
