Should Brian Cashman be fired?

[Yankees1962]

Ok. I just saw something that said Ed Barrow lasted 24 years with the Yankees, which would tie him with Cashman until opening day.

Then of course there are the Connie Macks and Clark Griffiths who ran baseball ops but can't really count because they owned the teams.

Unfortunately, I think Cashman is going to break the tie with Barrow. As to those other guys, I don't count them because of their ownership.

[ymike673]

Ok. I just saw something that said Ed Barrow lasted 24 years with the Yankees, which would tie him with Cashman until opening day.

Then of course there are the Connie Macks and Clark Griffiths who ran baseball ops but can't really count because they owned the teams.

I was about to check out Ed Barrow but I am pretty sure the title of GM did not exist until the 1940's although Ed and Branch did perform those duties.

[dpbddd99]

The best we can hope for is a promotion and a raise. Getting someone outside to come in and run the baseball operations.

However, Cashman's pride would NEVER allow this, and Hal is rather useless in terms of organizational changes. So just get ready for more.

I really like this idea if the head of ops has real power rather than being a puppet of Cash.

[effdamets]

I really like this idea if the head of ops has real power rather than being a puppet of Cash.

Sorry, but he needs to be gone. 100% gone. No promotion. No raise. No nothing. They need to start fresh and stop living off of the late 90's reputation.
Turn the page.

[sd.]

Yup. Jeter was inducted into the Hall of Fame this year after a year delay.

Brian Cashman is living off a reputation he built in Jeter’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th season.

[NelsonMuntz]

Be sure to file Andrew Heaney under the list of predictable Cashman failures for the next time a Cashman apologist pulls the “Cashman is infallible and shouldn’t be questioned” card.

[hhill]

Brief thoughts:
1-Aren't the Rays fun to watch? Pitching, hitting,defense and young.

2-I wont follow the Yanks unless Cashman goes and the m.o. of the organization changes. No $ to attend their games.

3-All the changes at the margins like firing Boone dont mean a thing

4-I learn so much from listening to Smoltz

[Strategerie]

My vote remains "no". I like what's going on with our pitching (very strong starters, great depth, good bullpen arms), our drafting seems much improved, and I think our minor league prospects are better than people think (and we did have an amazing winning percentage across the different levels of our minor league system). We developed a new problem this year which was a bad offense. I believe this will get fixed and we will go back to having amongst the best offenses next year.

A common framing when making an investment or business decision is to establish a base case (most likely case), a downside scenario, and an upside scenario. Sometimes the downside scenarios materialize and a sign of a strong investment/business decision is a good result even in a downside scenario. I believe what happened in 2021 was the downside scenario yet we still won 92 games (and were at about a 96 win run rate if you throw out the first 15 games). I remain happy with the roster construction of the 2021 Yankees but disappointed by the performance of that roster (in particular, a consistently bad offense that didn't deserve to win this year).

We had very poor fundamentals, on field decision making, and on field performance last year (particularly amongst the higher average hitters (DJ, Urshela, Gleyber) versus the narrative of the problem being focused on the power hitters). I expect and hope that this problem is addressed with many changes to the coaching staff (most notably Boone, Thames, and Nevin leaving) and perhaps more focus on teaching fundamentals throughout the organization.

I do have concerns about (a) roster management (in particular, overly riding players with iffy track records who have minor league options) and (b) Cashman's willingness to give up lots of prospects for rentals and near rentals at the trade deadline (atypical of his track record and I prefer the old orientation). I hope that the poor roster management was exacerbated by widespread underperformance that will not repeat itself. I also hope that we picked the right prospects to give up at the deadline and that those moves were needed to prevent the continued, disproportionate plundering of our system in the rule 5 draft.

This will be a particularly fascinating offseason with a new (and likely very different) CBA, a loaded free agent class, many extensions that I think we will consider in the offseason, many players coming off down seasons that we will have to evaluate, an angry Yankees fan base, .... We will also get very hit by increasing salaries thru the arbitration process in the off season.

Despite the particularly disappointing last 1.5 years (I consider everything but think winning % is a better indicator of forward looking job performance than championships), I want Cashman to be the one navigating those dynamics (and realize I'm in the extreme minority here). I'm confident many knowledgeable people in the broader baseball community would agree with my assessment (and some won't).

Anyways, I thought this topic could use some more diversity of thought so I figured I'd put my very different perspective out there. My biggest concern with future championships is the possibility that (a) the new CBA pushes more teams into the playoffs or (b) we make the bad move of replacing Cashman (which I find unlikely but possible after the last 1.5 years).

[sd.]

Strategerie - I'm curious. Which members of the offense this year do you think under performed significantly, and what do you expect out of them going forward?

I posted a similar question to the group in the off-season thread but I didn't see you respond. Sorry if I missed it. If I did, let me know and ill go back and look again.

[Strategerie]

Strategerie - I'm curious. Which members of the offense this year do you think under performed significantly, and what do you expect out of them going forward?

I posted a similar question to the group in the off-season thread but I didn't see you respond. Sorry if I missed it. If I did, let me know and ill go back and look again.

Thanks for the really good question. I didn't see it (or answer it) on the other thread. My thoughts:

Underperformed - 1. Voit 2. DJ. 3. Gio. 4. Gleyber. 5. Hicks 6. Rizzo as a Yankee. 7. Gallo as a Yankee. 8. Clint Frazier 9. Gardner over the whole year. (I'll exclude Jay Bruce (low expectations but wow was he bad and just one more early win might have made a big difference)) 10. Miggy Andujar (although I didn't have high expectations here, he still came in under them)

Performed roughly at expectations - 1. Judge. 2. Giancarlo. 3. Gary Sanchez. 4. Odor

Overperformed - noone of any materiality (Greg Allen is the best I can think of across his 40ish ABs, should have been more)

I'll also give my take on pitching:

Under. - 1. Cole. 2. German. 3. Sevy (expected to join earlier and never got built up to start) 4. Aroldis 5. Britton 6. Clarke Schmidt. 7. Deivi 8. Heaney
About right - 1. Taillon. 2. Monty. 3. Kluber 4. Chad Green
Over. - 1. Cortes 2. Luetge 3. Clay Holmes. 4. Loaisiga. 5. Peralta. 6. Gil

So offensively, we were at 10 under, 4 right, 0 over
Pitching, we were at 8 under, 4 right, 6 over

Generally speaking my expectations will use say 2018-20 average OPS for offensive players (could subtract 15 OPS points for league wide offensive decline but that's false precision). For pitchers, I generally used xERA/FIP/xFIP for 2018-20. I also factored in health. I was not aiming to be overly scientific in answering your question and may have a person or two miscategorized.

The above doesn't overly factor in the bad defense, bad fundamentals, bad baserunning, etc..

It does show pretty massive underperformance by the offense and actually slight underperformance by the pitching (despite their strong overall results) based on my vantage point. I think the storyline that the underperformance was driven by being too righty heavy was slightly true but way overstated (we still didn't kill it, in aggregate, after we added some lefty bats at the deadline).

In terms of future expectations, I'll broadly say that I'd expect performance between 2018-20 average and 2021 performance, dependent on individual circumstances.

Thanks for the good and respectful question. I'd be curious for your take on this parsing of under versus right versus over performance.

[sd.]

Thanks for the good and respectful question. I'd be curious for your take on this parsing of under versus right versus over performance.

I listed it in the off-season thread (page 12). I kind of took the same approach as you, but threw out 2019 as I think it is becoming clear the juiced ball year is an aberration. Without 2019, there are only 3 or 4 I could see improving but they are serious questions about staying healthy. Hicks and Frazier especially. I'd love to be wrong, I'm a big fan of the guy, but unfortunately I thin Fraziers career might be over.

[Strategerie]

I listed it in the off-season thread (page 12). I kind of took the same approach as you, but threw out 2019 as I think it is becoming clear the juiced ball year is an aberration. Without 2019, there are only 3 or 4 I could see improving but they are serious questions about staying healthy. Hicks and Frazier especially. I'd love to be wrong, I'm a big fan of the guy, but unfortunately I thin Fraziers career might be over.

I like Frazier too. With him, it comes down to the prognosis on his health situation. Will go strongly in one direction or the other with him, dependent on health. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he got non-tendered despite his low service time (which would be indicative of a poor prognosis).

I have never been a big fan of Hicks. Nonetheless, I was positive on the signing at the time because I thought he gave the Yankees a very good deal. At this point in time, I think his surplus value has gone from very positive to slightly negative. That being said, I think he is seriously underrated at this point and has a good chance to rebuild his value significantly (like Giancarlo has).

I really hope Voit has a good prognosis to be ready for spring training. I think he is underrated as well (but I don't know enough about his knee issue to know the full health risk with him)

In terms of expectation setting, I generally included 2019 and just normalized for the league average 30 point change in OPS ( 758 in 2019 and 728 in 2021 (or something like that)).

I will read the post you allude to at a later time. Great question and topic of conversation.

[Yankees1962]

I just voted "Yes". It's time to turn the page on the Cashman era.

[sd.]

In terms of expectation setting, I generally included 2019 and just normalized for the league average 30 point change in OPS ( 758 in 2019 and 728 in 2021 (or something like that)).

Fair, I'm just not sure the ball helped everyone equally. I never really looked into it that in depth so I left it out.