WHAT A PATHETIC WHINE
Yankees GM Brian Cashman’s complaints about the Astros misses several key points
The poor Yankees.
Sad Brian Cashman.
The former Evil Empire, begging for our pity and sympathy in 2022.
I mean get the ____ out of here. Look, there are a thousand ways to go with this one — mainly because everything that Cashman recently said about the Astros was so weak, misplaced and unbelievably wrong — so let’s start by taking the high road.
Maybe Cashman misspoke. Because that’s the only way that the longtime general manager of one of the most powerful and wealthy franchises in sports could have said something this … dumb.
Misguided.
Pathetic, really.
John McClain loved to use that word when he was tweeting about the Texans at their worst.
Pathetic is perfectly fitting right now for poor ol’ Cashman and his sad little Yanks.
“The only thing that stopped (us) was something that was so illegal and horrific,” Cashman told The Athletic this week. “So I get offended when I start hearing we haven’t been to the World Series since ’09. Because I’m like, ‘Well, I think we actually did it the right way.’ Pulled it down, brought it back up. Drafted well, traded well, developed well, signed well.”
Illegal?
Yes. The Astros, across the board, have said many times and many ways they were wrong in 2017 and part of ’18, and they were punished for it by Major League Baseball.
Horrific?
My gosh. What a baby.
Do you have a couple spare tissues sitting around? Because the pitiful Yankees need all the help they can get and Cashman has suddenly become one of the biggest whiners in sports.
“The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off,” Cashman said.
Dude. Seriously?
What happened in 2015 when a Houston-based franchise that drafted well, traded well, developed well and signed well flew north to your place on short rest and shut you out 3-0 in an American League Wild Card game?
What happened in 2019, Cash, when the big and bad Astros took two of three AL Championship Series contests inside a silenced Yankee Stadium, then triumphantly knocked out New York 4-2 on the way to nother World Series run?
Cashman and the Yanks are smart enough to read, right? Of course.
Well, if New York’s GM read before running his mouth, he’d have known that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and the league officially declared that the Astros didn’t cheat in 2019. Which means that unless Cashman is sitting on the sports world’s greatest secret — perhaps in the form of a still-sealed letter? — Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander, Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa, George Springer, Yordan Alvarez and
Co. won the 2019 ALCS fair and square, and beat the financially favored Yankees the old-fashioned way.
I covered the 2017 ALCS and World Series in person. Simple fact: The Astros were better than those Yankees. And the runnerup Los Angeles Dodgers were better than those Yankees.
New York also had significantly larger opening day payrolls than the Astros in 2017 and ’19.
Then there’s the real knockout in Houston vs. New York: Last season.
The Yankees only won 92 games and couldn’t make it past another wild-card letdown.
Who did that New York team lose to? Boston, which eventually fell 4-2 to the Astros in the ALCS.
For those Astros, A.J. Hinch, Jeff Luhnow and Springer were gone. Cole was a Yankee. Dusty Baker and James Click ran the Astros’ 2021 show. And despite everything that Houston’s MLB team dealt with in 2020 and ’21 — blistering hate, constant national booing, endless unfounded accusations and conspiracy theories — the remade Astros still won 95 games and came two victories away from another world title.
Not to mention that Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Lance McCullers Jr., Altuve and Correa were key members of the 2021 Astros and core members of the 2017 World Series-winning Astros, which supports the local belief that the ’17 team was so good it didn’t need to cheat to win.
Illegal sign stealing was a serious problem throughout
MLB in 2017. If Cashman wanted to blame the right problem, he’d point his finger at Manfred for acting too slow and waiting until the 2019 offseason to take an obvious problem seriously.
The Yankees also were fined for using a dugout phone improperly (prior to 2017) as part of the fallout of Boston’s 2017 Apple Watch saga that eventually led toward the Astros’ signstealing punishments three years later.
Did Cashman conveniently forget that?
Then there’s the fact that’s always avoided whenever the Astros’ 2017 season is discussed. Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton and Verlander dominated the Yankees on the mound in the playoffs.
New York scored two total runs in the Astros’ Games 1 and 2 home wins.
How great were the wronged Yanks in Games 6 and 7 back inside Minute Maid Park? Aaron Judge’s team responded with one combined run in two more Astros wins.
One.
If memory serves, the Yankees’ home-plate defense was also suspect at critical times in the 2017 and ’19 ALCS.
George Steinbrenner would have made annual, sweeping changes if his Yankees kept falling short when it mattered. Since 2015, when the rebuilt Astros started winning again, they have knocked out New York three times in the playoffs.
Steinbrenner also would’ve axed Cashman for spending so much money, year after year, yet failing to construct a team good enough to even reach the Fall Classic for more than a decade.
And he would’ve fired Cashman for whining so much in pinstripes.
Horrific?
It’s pathetic, really.