Pressure's on for Cashman to turn this around
THIS IS some sorry baseball season in New York, where the only hope rests with a team currently in last place.
That would be the traditional powerhouse Yankees, who only look good compared to their crosstown rival. The Mets? They threw in their orange and blue towels with the trade of David Robertson, their best player.
Baseball’s two highest-paid teams are stuck in the muck of mediocrity more than 100 games in, but only one of them has given up on the season. There are still a few hours to go before Tuesday’s 6 p.m. deadline, but the Yankees are still looking like a likely buyer from here — although Joel Sherman of The Post is reporting the Yankees are at least open to listening on walk-year guys such as Harrison Bader, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Wandy Peralta and Luis Severino (and by the way, good luck trading Severino).
So that means the pressure is on Yankees general manager Brian Cashman to do something worthwhile, and give us all something to follow, and look forward to, over the next couple months.
I don’t mean to put any more pressure on Cashman than he already must feel. He gets killed on social media (way worse than me even), and that’s by people who profess to be big Yankee fans. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, since many of those same Yankees fans booed Joey Gallo, Aaron Hicks and others out of town, doing them an inadvertent favor with their Bronx cheers.
Cashman must have the thickest skin of almost anyone, and that’s probably the most important trait for any Yankees general manager. But what he needs most today is creativity.
Turning this dreary, vanilla team with its 94 OPS plus into a World Series contender might be Cashman’s toughest task yet, and
I get that the situation is partly of his own making. While these Yankees remain a few games over .500, they don’t even look that good, as the mistakes of the past few years are starting to add up.
As much as I think of Cashman, and a quarter century straight of winning records shouldn’t be ignored, let’s face it. He is in a slump. The seven-year extension for Hicks, a slightly better-thanaverage player even at his peak, was ill advised from the git-go. The big-money deal for Luis Severino, as wise as it looked at the time, is an unmitigated disaster.
The trades have been worse. The deal that sent Gio Urshela and Gary Sanchez to the Twins for Josh Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Ben Rortvedt looks abysmal. IKF wasn’t a shortstop (but he is a solid utilityman), Donaldson has been an injurywracked, strikeout-prone defensive specialist for $25 million a year and Rortvedt remains a non-entity.
Joey Gallo couldn’t make it in New York. Frankie Montas got hurt. That seems to be a theme — so did Lou Trivino and Scott Effross.
The one great and necessary move over the last couple years was the re-signing of the great Aaron Judge, and that was driven by owner Hal Steinbrenner, who ultimately understood that they absolutely had to retain the game’s best position player, and also that $360 million was an absolute bargain for him. (Carlos Correa had an offer of $350M and Trea Turner $342M — show of hands, who thinks Judge is only 3 percent better than Correa or 5 percent better than Turner?)
Cashman’s career will one day get him to the Hall of Fame, and rightfully so, but he needs to adjust now. We love the move toward traditional baseball with the hirings of Sean Casey, Brian Sabean and Omar Minaya.
The analytics guys seem to have led Cashman down the wrong path lately. It isn’t certain Cashman made a conscious effort to move back toward tradition, but that’s not important. Let’s just applaud the additions. (For the record, in a recent interview, Cashman says he remains committed to both ways to do things and isn’t de-emphasizing analytics.)
Anyway, the pressure’s on. He better come up with something good, and it won’t be easy. While the Yankees are hopeful the return of Judge and imminent returns of Nestor Cortes and Jonathan Loaisiga will make a difference, they need more to save this season. The Yankees have required an upgrade in left field since last year, they need an upgrade at catcher and it would be nice if they found a long-term solution at third base, too. And it isn’t going to be a breeze in this market.
The position player market looks lackluster bordering on lame. Cody Bellinger is reportedly staying on the North Side of Chicago, Cashman didn’t make a call on Randal Grichuk and it’s hard to name another outfielder that would help beyond Juan Soto, who is unlikely to be traded with the Padres fighting their way back into the race. (Never mind that it’s hard to see Steinbrenner adding $25M to the payroll with the team currently out of playoff position.)
The catching market may be even worse. The Royals have fielded calls on Salvador Perez and talked to teams, but they don’t seem anxious to move him (and again, it’s questionable whether the Yankees want to add $20M to their payroll at a time they are in Steve Cohen tax territory.)
Cashman has a tall task indeed. If he can somehow pull himself out of this one, and make the playoffs a 22nd time in 26 years, by all rights the criticism should go away. But it won’t of course.