Now it’s all on Cashman

What Brian Cashman really does by not extending the contract of Joe Girardi is place a very big bet on himself.

Whatever caused Cashman to arrive at this decision, with the approval of Hal Steinbrenner, the 2017 Yankees have already set a very high bar for the ’18 Yankees.

Because the ’17 Yankees were a win away from the World Series, even if the Astros outscored them, 11-1, when the American League Championship Series returned to Houston, and effectively threw them down a flight of stairs.

I honestly believe that in coming to this decision, Cashman didn’t just look at one season – this one – with Girardi, he looked at the whole body of work. Which is where it gets complicated.

Because this was the closest the Yankees have come to the World Series since ’09, the one season in which they won it all with Girardi as their manager.

They lost the ALCS in six games to the Rangers in 2010, but if you remember that one, you know that it was a six-game series that felt like a sweep. The Yankees fell behind three games to one, CC saved them in Game 5, they went to Arlington and lost Game 6 to the immortal Colby Lewis.

Another time they got swept in the ALCS by the Tigers. The rest of it was first-round losses, a wild card loss to the Astros, or not making the playoffs. It is a successful, complicated resume, further complicated by the fact that the Yankees, until this season, were burdened by Back-End All-Stars, the team so often burdened by past-theirprime players who didn’t sign themselves to bad contracts (hey there, Jacoby Ellsbury!).

In the end, Cashman had a right to do what he did. And so the makeover that began with all those deals at the trade deadline of 2016 is complete now, with so many young players on the field and more in the chute and the manager who managed here for 10 years on his way out the door.

The general manager, about to sign a new deal of his own, is now as powerful as any Yankee general manager has ever been. The next manager will be even more of an extension of Cashman than Girardi was, before the two of them drifted the way they obviously did. I’ve said this all along: Cashman clearly never bought into the notion that his team overachieved in the playoffs, not after bringing in all those reinforcements at the end of July. He thought he had enough to go all the way to the World Series. Yankees didn’t. The manager goes.

General manager had a right to do what he did.

Now he better be right.