Giddy over Bronx rebuild

Pro football got better last season because the Dallas Cowboys finally got a lot better. The same thing happens in baseball, and this season, if the Yankees get a lot better, and that means better at doing something more than contending for the second wild card in the American League.

“This is a time for us of exciting uncertainty,” general manager Brian Cashman is saying Friday morning.

Of course there’s less uncertainty with the Mets right now, exciting or otherwise, even with the current questions about David Wright’s future, if Wright even has a future. Because if he can’t play third base, Jose Reyes sure can, and that happens to be a great irony of New York sports right now, just because once we thought the two of them would be playing next to each other in the Mets infield for a long time. Even without Wright the Mets can win the National League East if the starting pitchers stay healthy.

Last season the Mets ultimately lost threefifths of their rotation and just about all of their infield and still finished 87-75 and got a wild card. The Yankees were 84-78, and stayed in the wild card race a ridiculously long time. But it was still a dreary 84-78 as the Mets were coming on the way they did at the end of August and all the way through September. It is one of the reasons why Cashman hit the reset button as famously as anyone in a job like his ever has around here, and became a seller at the trade deadline instead of a buyer.

Now here the Yankees are, reset and reimagined, their fans not just talking about Gary Sanchez and Greg Bird and Aaron Judge, but prospects like Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier that Cashman got when he traded away Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller, two relief pitchers who helped pitch their new teams all the way to Game 7 of the World Series.

So basically what Cash did was sell the Series to Chicago and Cleveland, and start figuring a way back there for the New York Yankees.

“We made the choice to go about it differently because we basically felt we had no choice,” Cashman says.

Cashman did not have enough of a farm system, no matter what the Yankees spend on free agents in the next couple of years and which ones they go after. Now he suddenly has a deep farm system, one he’s been talking about and Yankee fans have been talking about since the middle of last season. Through it all Cashman swears his team isn’t conceding anything to anybody this season.

“The high ceiling we believe the young guys have,” he says, “we may see some of that ceiling as early as ’17.”

I mentioned to him Friday morning that in two sports this week we found out how quickly things can change. Zaza Pachulia crashes into Kevin Durant’s knee, and things change, in a big way, for the Warriors, maybe for weeks and maybe for the rest of the season. And David Price, on whom the Red Sox bestowed what was once Yankee money – Yankee money and beyond – suddenly came up with a sore elbow, even as he’s told – for now – that he only needs rest to make that go away and not season-ending surgery. “Listen,” Cashman said, “one hundred and sixty-two games is a long way. But I honestly believe it’s going to be a fun journey for us. Without guarantees. We’re going to witness exciting growth spurts and missteps, and then we’re going to watch as the individual gets up after the missteps and takes the next step forward. That’s where the exciting uncertainty comes in, involving some younger players who don’t have track records. But around them we have a collection of really good players capable of a lot. Obviously there’s no guarantee when you walk through the door, or this early in spring training, what the pay-off might be. But our fans are gonna grow with these young guys. Struggle with them and bond with them and grow with them.” Cashman talks about Sanchez some, the star of August and September and the first young hitter in a while that Yankee fans wanted to buy a ticket to watch. He talked about the way Greg Bird, coming back from big shoulder surgery, has looked in the first week of spring training, with doubles and home runs and power to all fields. And then he was talking about Aaron Judge, who hits balls nobody can find when he hits them. “(Judge) is capable of a lot,” Cashman says. “Whether this is his time yet or not remains to be the seen. But you are not going to come across somebody in our sport with his physicality other than (Giancarlo) Stanton. Now the last test with him is the major league level. If he gets to 500 at-bats, thirty home runs are going to come easy with this guy. But the question is always the same: Can he limit the strikeouts?”

And the Yankee general manager talks about the top of his rotation, Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia, one of the surprises of ’16, somebody pitching for a new contract, and Michael Pineda, who showed so much arm last season and then consistently sabotaged himself by getting taken out of the ballpark, particularly in hitters’ counts. Maybe this is the season for Pineda at Yankee Stadium, with his big stuff, when he doesn’t find a way to pitch small in so many important moments. Behind them, of course, as the Yankee try to get to Betances and Chapman with the lead, is a scrum of other young arms looking to fill the fourth and fifth spots in Joe Girardi’s rotation.

“Put it this way,” Cashman says finally, part GM and part salesman and part preacher on this day. “I have a very healthy, optimistic curiosity about our team. I think we have some talented, passionate, hungry kids who are going to ignite a lot of the attention. Those players are going to get the chance to push themselves into the mix and ignite our fan base. That’s where the optimism comes from, and the curiosity.”

You know what no longer fills all those empty, expensive seats down near the field at Yankee Stadium, an expanse that sometimes look as wide as the Atlantic Ocean? The past. So now the Yankees sell the future. Not just a reset. Not a rebuild. A remodeling job in the Bronx, one that began last July. It will be interesting to see what everything looks like this July.