For Yankees GM Brian Cashman, better to learn from World Series loss than come up with alibis for it
Yankees GM Brian Cashman speaks to reporters at a spring training media day at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday Feb. 15, 2024. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
SAN ANTONIO — No, Brian Cashman didn’t lose his temper Tuesday and bust through his quarter-zip pullover, like the front-office Hulk we witnessed a year ago at the GM meetings in Scottsdale.
But it was understandable if Cashman turned green anyway, only this time with envy, after the Dodgers outclassed his Yankees during last week’s World Series loss, which ended in perhaps the most humbling way possible. The self-sabotage on display during the fifth inning of Game 5 represented seven months’ worth of widening cracks finally swallowing them on the season’s biggest stage, but Cashman wouldn’t cop to any deeper fundamental flaws, or lay the blame at the feet of manager Aaron Boone.
Instead, the GM calmly admitted that the AL champs didn’t perform to their best when the stakes were highest, which in reality was probably the biggest indictment of everyone wearing pinstripes.
Despite numerous questions regarding the Yankees’ poor baserunning — even the team’s No. 1 cheerleader John Sterling said they “run the bases like drunks” during an ALCS broadcast — and porous defense, Cashman kept his cool, fielding them more successfully than Gleyber Torres ever did with his glove.
“First and foremost, I acknowledge that we played poorly in the World Series,” Cashman said Tuesday. “We all saw that, and unfortunately our A-game didn’t show up when it counted the most.”
No argument here. But when pressed repeatedly on the reasons for that, such as the chronic symptoms mentioned above, it was really the only time during the 70-minute conversation that Cashman got defensive about his malfunctioning roster. In his mind, this wasn’t a case of organizational failings exploited by the Dodgers’ supposedly higher baseball IQ, and he took offense to the suggestion (politely, in this instance).
“I think many of the people here actually picked us to win the World Series,” Cashman said. “The same people asking the questions of what’s inherently wrong, and why did we play so badly, and these are the reasons, and you got to fix it. My job is to always fix areas of problems . . . but you can’t have it both ways.”
Full disclosure: I did pick the Yankees to beat the Dodgers in seven games. After seeing the Mets run out of gas in the NLCS, the thought was L.A. — with its shorthanded rotation, tiring bullpen and hobbled Freddie Freeman — wouldn’t outlast a recharged Yankees’ team that featured the reigning Cy Young winner, an overachieving relief corps and the three-headed monster of Soto-Judge-Stanton.
And yet, the savvy and resourceful Dodgers still won, and did so by erasing a 5-0 deficit in Game 5 when the Yankees gifted them five unearned runs in that fifth inning alone. Was that luck? Or did Aaron Judge clanging a routine fly ball, Anthony Volpe spiking an infield throw and Gerrit Cole not covering first base constitute a more systemwide meltdown?
That fifth inning was a flashback to the Yankees who went 25-26 during a two-month stretch, hardly a small sample size but otherwise mitigated by the team’s 40-19 start. While this offseason already is being dominated by speculation regarding the Yankees’ chances of re-signing Juan Soto, the team that traded for him this year was the one that lost the World Series.
Soto wasn’t the reason they couldn’t finish the job, but even a $600 million player needs a competent supporting cast, too. The Yankees were able to provide that in winning the AL East, along with the first two playoff rounds against the Royals and Guardians. But then they got tripped up by a Dodgers’ team that exposed their weaknesses — as gleefully pointed out by sidelined L.A. reliever Joe Kelly, who told the “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast that their scouting reports indicated the Yankees were “lazy” and should have been “ranked eighth” among the 12 playoff teams.
“I heard that,” said Cashman, who said he was told differently by the Dodgers people he knew. “I think it’s more representative of some specific players rather than the overall group. And in Joe’s case, it feels like it’s a little personal, the way he’s out talking like he has.”
The World Series is over. What Cashman is left to grapple with this winter is how to end a title drought that has now stretched to 15 years and counting. He’s already secured Cole for atop the rotation — after beating him Monday at his own opt-out game — and next up is determining the future of Boone, as the deadline to pick up his 2025 contract is Saturday.
It’s hard to envision Boone not coming back after getting the Yankees to their first Fall Classic since 2009, and in all likelihood, he’ll receive a multiyear extension. Cashman still sees Boone as part of the solution, not the problem, despite being the only Yankees manager to go his first seven seasons without a title.
There was a moment during Tuesday’s media session that Cashman did allow himself some vindication for last year’s outburst, when he loudly took reporters to task for criticizing how the Yankees operate. The GM earned as much, considering that he followed up that expletive-laced tirade with a World Series trip the next October.
But Cashman also didn’t bring the Commissioner’s Trophy home to the Bronx, either. That means the ’24 Yankees weren’t good enough, and better to learn from that World Series loss than come up with alibis for it.
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.
