Lennon: Cashman owns his role in Yanks' poor showing

Brian Cashman, the architect of the most disappointing team in baseball, didn’t attempt to sugarcoat the unsightly mess happening in the Bronx lately.

And no, we’re not talking about the puddle the Angels’ Dylan Bundy left on the pitcher’s mound Monday night. This is something only Cashman can clean up, and it’s going to require more than a few towels and a broom.

"We suck right now, as bad as you can be," Cashman said Tuesday afternoon. "So trying to knock ourselves out of that is obviously the effort. But until we get online and start flying high again, it’s going to look bad and it plays bad and it stinks to the high heavens and right now we’ve got to own that."

Give Cashman points for honesty. You won’t find many GMs going on the record to trash his underperforming roster, especially one that costs $200 million.

And a few hours later, his words proved motivational, as the Yankees hammered the Angels, 11-5, to snap their four-game losing streak.

Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez and Miguel Andujar each homered to power an 11-hit attack and the 11 runs were a season high. The slumping Gleyber Torres even chipped in with a pair of singles and two RBIs as the Yankees -- for a night anyway -- lowered the volume on the negative drumbeat assailing this team.

Obviously, one "W" isn’t life-changing. But if the Yankees can start stacking a few together, then maybe Cashman can avoid questions about firing people, like he faced before Tuesday’s game.

But there’s no hiding from the truth when you’re running the Yankees, and admitting you have a serious problem is the first step toward fixing it.

We never suspected Cashman would go after Aaron Boone, the manager he hand-picked from the ESPN booth back in 2017, but he also refused to even poke at the rest of the staff during Tuesday’s impromptu, 12-minute, on-field interview after the Yanks took BP.

"This is not an Aaron Boone problem and this is not a coaching staff problem," Cashman said. "They’ve got my support. They’re doing what they need to be doing. We’re just not getting the results.

"It’s easy from my chair to all of the sudden say, you know what, let me throw something overboard just to satisfy the masses and it’s harder to actually stick with what you got because you believe in it."

That response wasn’t unexpected. But then the GM put the bull’s-eye on his own back, without really being asked to do so.

"We’re not getting the results, and I’m the head of baseball operations, so that falls more on me more than them," Cashman added.

Cashman doesn’t own the Yankees, but when it comes to job security, he’s got the next-best thing: being very tight with the guy who does. Cashman is practically a Steinbrenner, having grown up under George then appointed as GM in the middle of the late-1990s dynasty. He’s also had an unparalleled run of success — helped considerably by the Steinbrenner fortune, of course — only missing the playoffs four times in 23 years.

This is not your typical GM-owner relationship, and it allows Cashman to be a little more out front, ready to take the bullets when necessary. That explains him twice doing on-field media scrums over the span of four days, the first coming in the middle of the weekend sweep by the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Barring trades or major medical developments, such frequency is unusual, but Cashman can read the room. The current NYC heat wave (94 degrees at Tuesday’s first pitch) is nothing compared to the rising temperature around these Yankees, and Boone’s relentless positivity during the past three months is now having the opposite effect. His words only serve to spray this dumpster fire with lighter fluid.

Enter Cashman, who used a less family-newspaper-friendly description for "kicking" games away during the team’s poor play while also saying the Yankees have been "unwatchable" and their performance "unacceptable." Another interesting tidbit: the GM didn’t totally dismiss the notion of being sellers with the trade deadline only a month away, but only if they "fall like a stone," forcing them to "regroup and reassess."

Since the Yankees entered Tuesday trailing the Red Sox by 7 1/2 games in the AL East, and were six games back for the second wild card, I asked Cashman what would qualify as that "falling stone." Would it be a double-digit deficit by the All-Star break? "I don’t know," Cashman said, adding later, "It depends where we’re at."

Cashman insists that the plan is to be buyers, but with a big disclaimer attached: What’s been going on recently with the Yankees can’t continue.

"Most of the heavy lifting has to come from within," Cashman said. "And if it doesn’t, then me adding to it is not going to make a difference. We’re not giving up on it, but we are frustrated by it, and I understand that our fans are frustrated as hell watching it."

The Yankees passed being frustrating weeks ago. They’re much worse. And that smell in the Bronx isn’t going away on its own.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.