Cashman, Yankees change with times
GM says franchise has ‘transformed’
TAMPA New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is baseball’s Renaissance man, a pinstriped daredevil willing to try virtually anything.
He skydives out of airplanes, even at the cost of breaking his right leg. He scuba dives 120 feet down into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He walks 110 stories up around the CN Tower in Toronto. He rappels a 350-foot, 22-story building in Stamford, Conn., during the holidays.
He wants to swim with the sharks one day at the Tampa aquarium, run the New York City Marathon and even hike Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, with an elevation of 19,340 feet.
“I don’t even consider myself a daredevil, but I’m not afraid
to experience what life has to offer,” Cashman tells USA TODAY Sports. “You don’t want to wake up one day and say, ‘I wish I had done this or wish I had done that.’ I want to be one of those guys that said, ‘I did that.’
“When I was in China, I had fried jellyfish. Did I want to eat fried jellyfish? No, but at least I said I did it.
“You have a lot of different thoughts that run through your mind.”
Now, in his latest fearless adventure, he’s trying to do what no Yankees front office has done in generations — rebuild a team and win without incessantly jumping into the price-prohibitive free agent market.
The Yankees’ biggest free agent acquisition in three years was bringing back closer Aroldis Chapman with a five-year, $86 million deal in December after trading him away in the summer and watching him help the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series title in 108 years.
It has been eight years since the Yankees last won the World Series, but it only feels like a Cubs-like drought considering this could be their first decade without reaching the World Series since they traded for Babe Ruth in 1920.
“We have a lot of trophies,” Cashman says, “but they all have rust on them.”
The Yankees are still in the middle of their rebuild, so they probably won’t win it this year, either. Or even next year. The plan is to reduce their payroll to less than $195 million for the 2018 season and then jump headfirst into the free agent waters when the likes of Manny Machado and Bryce Harper will be free agents.
Yet until that time comes, they plan to act like a mid-market club, staying patient, building their most powerful farm system in 25 years and knowing the precise time to pounce in free agency.
If the Yankees’ calculations are correct, they’ll be ready to win again in 2019, vying for their first postseason victory since 2012, and become a perennial contender, just like the glory days with the nucleus of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada.
“It doesn’t matter which way you do it, no ring is any different than any other ring,” Cashman says. “Normally, it’s always going to come on the backbone of a strong player development/ scouting system. Obviously, we’ve imported players making a lot of money to finish that off, but the backbone is always the system.
“We do believe we have a lot of guys who are going to be special. But saying it means nothing. It’s having them reach those peaks on their own.”
Cashman could easily sit still, watch prospects such as Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird, Aaron Judge, Clint Frazier and Gleyber Torres grow and fill in the gaps in free agency, with only $71.1 million on the books in 2019.
Sorry, that’s not in Cashman’s DNA. He not only fully embraces sabermetrics and analytics in all of the Yankees’ decision-making, but he also has created a mental skills department and performance-science team. When GMs are poring over scouting reports during the winter, Cashman is in Toronto visiting Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello and Raptors owner Larry Tanenbaum, hanging out with Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, rapping on the phone with Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Jacksonville Jaguars vice president Tom Coughlin or having meetings with executives from the Chicago Blackhawks to the Atlanta Falcons.
“It’s my job as general manager of the Yankees to be utilizing every tool in the toolbox so we can be the best we can possibly be,” Cashman says. “I’m proud of the fact that we’re not afraid to be open-minded at all times.
“I don’t want to have this game pass us by. You’ve got to be willing to try and test different boundaries. Listen, there’s knowledge to be gained all over this planet.”
Like clubs such as the Tampa Rays and San Francisco Giants, the Yankees employ tactics such as arriving later in the morning for spring training workouts and occasionally traveling on the day of games on the road. They have medical personnel meeting with players to strengthen their minds. They have the latest technology in performance-science training, adopting some of the same eye tests the Maple Leafs use for their goalies.
“I’m proud of the fact that we’ve transformed as an organization,” Cashman says. “Analytics is something we gravitated to early on in the process.
“We still employ some of the greatest scouting personnel in the game, but for the old school, it’s taken time. Those who fight it just don’t know. It’s no different than when the radar gun came in. People used to say, ‘That’s a good arm.’ Then the radar gun got created, and you can actually measure arm velocity.
“It’s amazing to me we’re still even having this dialogue. The same old schoolers do everything they can to use numbers to negotiate their own personal salary or play the stock market, but they’re unwilling to apply it in this industry. It makes no sense.
“Listen, those people aren’t going to be around long in this game anymore.”
Cashman, baseball’s current longest tenured GM with one team and the longest in the Yankees front office since Ed Barrow from 1920 to 1945, realizes one day he’ll be gone, too. He and manager Joe Girardi are on the final year of their contracts, but all signs indicate they will return, with managing partner Hal Steinbrenner consistently praising their performance.
Besides, when’s the last time you’ve seen the Yankees enter a season completely drama-free? The Alex Rodriguez soap opera is off the air. There are no retirement tours for Rivera or Jeter. There’s no Posada controversy af- ter being stripped of his catching duties.
“For us, it’s always been about pure baseball. But because of the city we operate in, there are typical distractions that come along. But so far nothing,” Cashman says. “Look, you never want to lose. But we also think we have something good going here. We have a very large group of young, passionate kids that really want to be something special.
“We’ll see what happens, but let’s just say I have an optimistic curiosity.”