Cashman needs to stop talking Astros and focus on World Series
NEW YORK — Sometimes Brian Cashman, one of the best talkers to ever hold a job like his in New York sports and maybe the best of all time, talks too much. That is what happened this week with an interview he gave to The Athletic’s Andy McCullough in which he seemed to blame the Houston Astros for everything bad that has happened to the Yankees over the past five years except all the strikeouts. Cashman is the Yankees. He is supposed to be better than this, in a bigtime job like this, but came up sounding like a smalltimer.
I like Cash. Pretty much everybody in this business likes Cash, because he never hides, is never afraid to answer questions.
But he looked bad and sounded bad the other day, and made you want to yell at him to stop worrying about the Astros of 2017, and start worrying about the Red Sox and Blue Jays and Rays, unless the Astros have suddenly moved to the American League East without them telling anybody.
Here is just part of what he said to McCullough:
“The only thing that stopped [us] was something that was so illegal and horrific. 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. The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off.”
As one baseball executive said to me after reading the things Cashman said, “You want people to stop talking about how you haven’t been there since 2009? How about going back to the World Series? You know who did that last year? The Astros did.”
But it was Cashman’s choice to relitigate the past, and to focus on the Astros and their sign-stealing. He has a right to still be angry about that, of course. And the right to wonder if the Yankees would have managed to win the ‘17 American League Championship Series if the Astros hadn’t been stealing signs. But what never comes up with this narrative, and this familiar Yankee lament, is this:
After taking a three games to two lead in that series, the Yankees went back to Minute Maid Park in Houston and scored a grand total of one run in Games 6 and 7. Somebody has to explain to me what sign stealing had to do with Cashman’s hitters producing a single run in 18 innings, when they were one win away from the Series.
“People are like ‘Oh, we haven’t been to a World Series ...’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s as true a statement as it could be,’ ” Cashman said to McCullough.
As a matter of fact, it is as true a statement as one could be. The Yankees haven’t been back to the World Series since 2009. They couldn’t get past the Red Sox in 2018 and the Astros got them again in 2019, though you know Cash and his fans think that Jose Altuve buzzed the Astros into the World Series that time. And, by the way, whether the Yankees got derailed or not in 2017, what was holding them back in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, when the Rays beat them in five games? What was derailing them last season in a Wild Card game against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, when their $324 million ace, Gerrit Cole, couldn’t get out of the third inning?
The Red Sox not only won a World Series in 2018, they came within two ALCS victories of making it back last season, one in which they weren’t supposed to be anywhere near as good as Brian Cashman’s Yankees, who actually have now gone the last 12 seasons without making it to the Series. The longest the Yankees have gone without making the Series in 100 years is 14 seasons, between 1982 and 1995, right before Joe Torre got to town and Derek Jeter ran out to shortstop one April day in 1996.
They have now won one World Series since 2000.
You know what was more damaging in 2017 than the
Astros’ sign stealing. The fact that the Astros were the ones who got Verlander at the trade deadline that season and the Yankees did not.
“The fans, they’re fanatics for a reason,” Cashman said in The Athletic. “They don’t really care about how it all adds up. They just want to be the last team standing. As do we. But my job, and our front office’s job, is to find a way within the current restrictions that we have, and the options that are available: ‘OK, what can we come up with that solves these problems, as fast as possible?’ ”
We are going to find out all about that starting Thursday afternoon against the Red Sox at the Stadium.
Yankee fans don’t want to hear about what the Yankees didn’t do five years ago. They want to know what their team is going to do now. Want to know if Cashman has finally built them a team that can get back to your basic Fall Classic for the first time since, well, you know.
They want to know if this is the year when Cashman’s Yankees feel like the Yankees again.