THE LINE IS OPEN
Cashman ready to talk deal for starting pitcher
Brian Cashman is ready to dance, even with the Mets, but it takes two to tango.
The Yankees general manager on Friday made no secret of his intent to acquire a starting pitcher with just over a month left before the trade deadline and doubled down on his willingness to do business with the Mets.
Cashman said he has been in contact with Omar Minaya, now onethird of the Mets’ GM braintrust, to express in the Yankees’ interest in a deal — presumably for Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard — which led to a conversation with Sandy Alderson before he stepped down to focus on his battle with cancer.
“I’ll stay in touch with the Mets as well as everybody throughout,” Cashman said before the Yankees beat the Red Sox 8-1. “There’s no full-court press I can do. It’s a dance that anybody is willing to do with you. Each team has their own process, their own time frame and their own interest. The hope is we can, like any trade deadline, find the right song that we can both dance to.”
While the Yankees and Mets have not made a trade involving major leaguers since 2004, Cashman said he has no concerns over the potential fallout of a interborough deal.
“But I’m a director of baseball opera- tions,” he said. “There’s so many levels of this stuff and from an ownership’s perspective, things are a lot different. You’re managing a whole bunch of different departments. Hal Steinbrenner uses that pilot analogy. I get to look at things at 5,000 feet, he gets to look at things at 35,000 feet. That would be in fairness to the Wilpons as well.”
Cashman said he called the Mets — and the Red Sox — about Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller back in 2016, but found better returns elsewhere.
As recently as last season, though, trade talks between the Mets and Yankees fell apart. The Yankees had agreed to send two requested prospects if the Mets ate some of Jay Bruce’s remaining salary, according to The Post’s Joel Sherman, but Alderson went with a relief prospect from Cleveland instead, with the Indians taking on more money. And with Neil Walker, the Yankees called a deal off because of concerns over his medicals, The Post’s Mike Puma reported.
Domingo German and Jonathan Loaisiga have plugged rotation holes suitably, but Cashman said the only reason they wouldn’t add another starter is if the price tag is not appropriate.
“I have a lot of high-end talent that’s taken a long time to acquire or cultivate, but it’s going to cost something to get stuff,” Cashman said.