The blessed event in the Cashman family came July 3, 1967. Thus, Brian Cashman missed two significant events in New York Yankees history:
- He missed by a day sharing a birth date with the man he would grow up to work for – George Steinbrenner.
- He missed the Yankees’ rare last-place finish nine months earlier, their first since 1912.
The 2015 season doesn’t begin for three months, but as they are presently constituted, the Yankees resemble a last-place team more than a division champion or even a playoff contender. What has Cashman wrought?
Seventeen years into his position as the Yankees’ general manager, Cashman has the Yankees in danger of potentially rivaling the 1966 team, which shocked New York by finishing with a 70-89 record for a .440 winning percentage, worst in franchise history since 1913.
The 2015 Yankees may not finish anywhere near as poorly as that team did, but there is a telltale sign that should cause concern for the Yankees and their fans.
An integral member of the Yankees’ everyday lineup, Tony Kubek, retired after the 1965 season, afflicted with injuries, and the Yankees didn’t have a shortstop to replace him. Sound familiar?
Horace Clarke was the primary shortstop in 1966, later to become the second baseman, and, fairly or not, he became the personification of the Yankees’ bleak years that followed Kubek’s retirement and that of second baseman Bobby Richardson the following year.
The sudden, unexpected retirement of both players caught the Yankees by surprise, and they could be excused for not having had replacements ready. These Yankees have no excuse for their failure to have a shortstop ready to step in and replace Derek Jeter.
Even if Jeter hadn’t told the Yankees, before he announced it publicly, that the 2014 season would be his last, Cashman knew the time was coming. Jeter turned 40 years old in his 20th season in the majors, and the Yankees could easily have been developing a minor league shortstop to replace him when the time came.
That’s the sort of thing a good general manager does, prepare for the future as well as plan for the present. On the other hand, based on the Yankees’ dismal record of drafting and developing good players, their chances of developing a shortstop capable of replacing Jeter were not especially good.
Bill Madden of the New York Daily News writes an annual column at Thanksgiving time in which he picks the top turkeys of the year. Among this year’s selections was Mark Newman, the Yankees’ retiring senior vice president of baseball operations, who for 18 years oversaw scouting and development.
I sent Madden an e-mail suggesting that if Newman was a turkey so was Cashman for having kept him around all of those years despite his dreadful draft decisions.
During Cashman’s tenure as general manager, the Yankees selected three shortstops in the first round, all out of high school:
- Bronson Sardinha (2001) played 10 games for the Yankees in 2007, had 3 hits in 9 at-bats
- C.J. Henry (2005) did not play above Class A and batted .222 in four minor league seasons.
- Cito Culver (2010) has not played above Class A in five years in the minors, during which he has batted .233 with .316 on-base and .321 slugging percentages.
Cliff Pennington was selected by Oakland four picks after Henry in the 2005 draft and has hit .248 in five seasons in the majors with Oakland and Arizona.
While not suggesting that Pennington would have been an ideal successor to Jeter, I am saying that the Yankees had no reason to wait until this off-season to find a replacement and then designate Didi Gregorius as the one.
Gregorius, a Netherlands native, who will turn 25 in February, has been a part of two three-team trades in two years, moving from Cincinnati to Arizona to New York.
Although Cashman has made plenty of moves, good and bad, as general manager on which he can be judged, it is fair to say that he will be judged on what Gregorius does with the Yankees.
He is considered an excellent defensive player, but skeptics have pointed out that Gregorius, a left-handed hitter, has struggled against left-handed pitchers, batting .184 in 191 major league games. If Joe Girardi feels it necessary to platoon Gregorius with Brendan Ryan, that will not be a raging endorsement of Cashman’s decision to single out Gregorius.
The Yankees’ shortstop situation also has led to predictable rumors that the Yankees might be interested in Colorado’s oft-injured Troy Tulowitzki, but they already have one of those types in Alex Rodriguez, who is nearly 10 years older than the 30-year-old Tulowitzki and coming back from a lost season.
The Yankees have relegated Rodriguez to designated-hitting duties without waiting to see if he can play defense. Maybe their strategy is to get him so frustrated he’ll retire and they won’t have to pay him the $61 million they owe him.
To get Gregorius, the Yankees gave up Shane Greene, a 26-year-old pitcher, who as a rookie in the second half of last season was impressive with a 5-4 record, 3.79 earned run average and 80 strikeouts in 78 1/3 innings.
Did someone say the Yankees need starting pitchers? Yes, they do, but I guess Cashman figured if Greene were pitching for the Yankees and the other team’s batter hit ground balls between second and third there would be no one to field them if the Yankees didn’t have a shortstop.
It’s like Casey Stengel said when he was asked why the New York Mets made journeyman catcher Hobie Landrith their first pick in the 1961 expansion draft: “You have to have a catcher or you’ll have a lot of passed ball.”
Greene wasn’t the only starting pitcher Cashman traded. David Phelps had a 15-14 record and 4.21 e.r.a. in 40 starts and 47 relief appearances over three seasons with the Yankees, but Cashman traded him and infielder Martin Prado to the Miami Marlins to get Nathan Eovaldi, a hard-throwing right-hander, who in 33 starts last season had a 6-14 record and 4.37 e.r.a. As hard as he throws, though – mid to upper 90s – he had 142 strikeouts in 199 2/3 innings.
I am told the Yankees’ baseball operations staff unanimously endorsed the trade and believes that pitching coach Larry Rothschild can tinker with Eovaldi’s delivery to improve his effectiveness.
Eovaldi also cost the Yankees Martin Prado, who until they signed Chase Headley was slotted as the starting third baseman and then was switched to be the starting second baseman. That’s how versatile the Yankees found him to be last season. Now Jose Pirela, a 25-year-old Venezuelan with seven games of major league experience and eight years in the minors, is listed as the second baseman.
Can the Yankees win a division title or even a wild-card spot with Gregorius and Pirela in the middle of their infield? I would like to have asked Cashman that question, but he didn’t return my telephone calls. I would also like to have asked him if he ever heard of Horace Clarke and Jerry Kenney, Clarke’s infield mate. I remember them well, and I see the possibility of their ghosts returning to Yankee Stadium.