Laying The Groundwork

Dave Sheinin, who's a better writer than analyst, writes about Yankees GM Brian Cashman, noting that his contract expires at the end of October, and Hey! What do you know? We could probably use a new GM!

Sheinin doesn't really lay out much of a case one way or another, but doesn't point to Cashman's World Series success: Count the RingzZzZZ, Baby!

In my previous life, I was a fan of the Yankees. I'm lukewarm on Cashman. With the factionalized and bureaucratic way the Yankees are run (they literally have two separate front offices), he's managed fairly well. He can certainly navigate complex office environments, and he certainly has a strong reputation within the game -- much of that, I suspect, because he has survived with Big Stein for so long.

But those same reasons are why I'd grade him with an incomplete. It's unclear how many of the decisions were his doing, and how many of those were made by the Tampa side of the organization, or by Big Stein's heavy hand.

The Yankee drafts, for the most part, have been horrendous over the last few years, but, again, it's not clear how much input he actually has -- I'm fairly positive it ranges from "little" to "none".

So, I'm not really sure how fair it is to give him credit for all of the Yankees' successes. And I'm not really sure how fair it is to blame him for their recent failures either.

He's more of a mystery, despite his track record, than anything.