Different Year, Same Problems

Brian Cashman preached patience when he was asked about the injury-plagued, underachieving Yankees a few days ago.  In many ways, he had a point.  The team they're fielding right now isn't even close to the one they expected, and you'd have to figure they'll improve as players are activated from the injured list.  It's also better to have this happen now than at the end of the season, which is what happened to them last year.  And it's true that they've been treading water and are only in last place because of how good the AL East is.

Except the problem is that this isn't the first time the Yankees have had to endure injuries and a slow start.  In fact, it's rare when they don't have a number of significant players on the IL.  This many at the same time?  No!  But when was the last time they made it through a season without multiple key players missing significant time?  Which, frankly, falls on the GM.

To his credit, Cashman has acknowledged some of his trade deadline acquisitions haven't exactly worked out, and he's taken responsibility for that.  Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino are just the latest example, but that list also includes Sonny Gray and Joey Gallo among others.  Instead of making the team better, they had the opposite effect.  They made the team worse.

Ditto with some of the free agents who've signed with the Yankees under Cashman.  Carlos Rodon, this offseason's big free agent prize, is yet to throw a pitch in Pinstripes and is already looking like a $162 million mistake.  And let's not forget the ridiculous amount of money Aaron Hicks is being paid to take up a roster spot and be completely useless!  (Nobody's gonna be stupid enough to take on that contract, so just suck it up and DFA him!)

Meanwhile, the team goes into every season with one goal and one goal alone.  It's the same every year.  Win the World Series.  Which is something they haven't done in 14 years!  They haven't even won the pennant in 14 years!  They aren't even close! 

Yes, they consistently make the playoffs, but they aren't anywhere near as good as the Astros, the team they know the AL pennant will go through.  Winning the AL East is obviously the main goal, but they also need to build a team that can be competitive with Houston.  Which is something Cashman consistently has not done.

George Steinbrenner never would've stood for this.  To him, 14 years without a pennant would be completely unacceptable!  He would've changed managers and/or GM's multiple times by now.  Yet Cashman and Boone have not only kept their jobs, they had their contracts renewed!  Hal Steinbrenner is most definitely NOT his father!

Hal obviously has significantly more patience than George.  However, Yankee fans got pretty used to George's "World Series or bust" approach and grew to have the same attitude.  Which is part of what makes Hal's insistence to "stick with the plan" on Cashman and Aaron Boone all the more frustrating!  Yankees fans want results and aren't getting them, yet the owner is sticking with the guys who continue not getting results.

It was Einstein who defined "insanity" as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  That's exactly what Brian Cashman's been doing for more than a decade!  (I don't think it's a coincidence that the Yankees' World Series absence started in 2010--the year George Steinbrenner died and Hal took over day-to-day operation of the team!)

Another popular quote is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Under Joe Torre in the late 90s, it wasn't broken.  Cashman was the architect of the team that won four World Series in five years and six of eight AL pennants from 1996-2003.  So, yeah, it made sense to stick with what was working.  In the last 20 years, though, the Yankees' only pennant came in their 2009 championship season.  Yet this is somehow considered OK for an organization that values winning over everything and consistently has one of the highest payrolls in baseball?!

Which brings to mind all those other cliches about complacency and how change is a constant.  How many times has a team that was on the brink of a championship or frustrated about how a good team keeps coming up short made a change simply because they felt they needed one?  The 2018-19 St. Louis Blues immediately come to mind.  They fired their coach midseason and won the Stanley Cup!  Yet the only changes the Yankees ever make are to the on-field personnel!  The decision-makers in the front office (who actually put that team on the field), meanwhile, keep their jobs despite the fact they've long overstayed their welcomes.

So, the way I see it, there's only one solution to the Yankees' continual plight.  It's something that, frankly, should've been done a long time ago.  Because there's been one constant throughout this 20-year run of not-the-type-of-success-they've-been-looking-for.  Brian Cashman.  Blame the manager and players all you want, but Cashman's the guy who put all of them in place, and he deserves to be held just as accountable as them.

Does Brian Cashman deserve all of the blame for the state of the team?  Of course not!  Plenty of it should be directed Aaron Boone's way, too.  And some of the injuries are simply bad luck (although, they did fire the training staff a few years ago, hoping that would help with the injuries...it hasn't!).  But the number and frequency of injuries year after year represent a bigger problem, which, again, falls back on Cashman.  As do the free agent and trade misses.

Cashman has also done a lot of good during his time as Yankees GM.  I'm not saying he hasn't.  But the time has come for someone else to be making those decisions.  Theo Epstein twice got out of dodge before he wore out his welcome.  Cashman wore out his welcome a while ago, but he's still there.  Which means Hal needs to finally act like his father and do what needs to be done.  Unless he wants to go yet another season with a pre-World Series playoff exit (if they even get that far).