When you look at Brian Cashman’s track record as General Manager of the New York Yankees, it is quite impressive.
The longest tenured GM in both Yankees’ and MLB history has assembled four World Series Championships off of six AL Pennants. 25 straight winning seasons with an average of 94 wins-per-season have come New York’s way for 21 playoff appearances.
Now let’s come down to earth more and look at his track record from 2010 to today. It looks a lot different.
Three missed postseasons with two AL Wild Card defeats and being swept in the ALCS twice puts New York at a 32-37 postseason record. Last time Yankees baseball made it to that coveted series in October was back in 2009. It’s safe to say that the last 12, possibly 13 years now, have been extremely rough.
What Cashman has done in the overall scheme of things has been legendary, but at some point or another everyone runs out of gas. For the Yankees, they have been stranded on the road side since 2017.
Just think, this is a team that has been considered a legitimate playoff contender and even a World Series contender every season going back to 2017. The end results in a repetitive choke by players and management.
Currently, New York stands 43-36 and just lost 1-2 to the 21-60 Oakland Athletics, who are on a historic losing path this season. Being 9.5 games off of the first place Tampa Bay Rays and 4.0 games behind the second place Baltimore Orioles is just embarrassing.
Both the Rays and Orioles 2023 payroll of a combined $139.4M barely stands at half of the Yankees’ massive payroll of $278.4M. To add on for reference Oakland only has a $58.2M payroll, which is last in all of baseball as the Yankees rank 2nd.
Signing big named players to massive year / money contracts has not worked for the Yankees, it is time for something to change, but will it? Seemingly the front office of Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman are happy with the results as long as a postseason appearance comes in a few months.
Cashman was riding Gene Michael's horse for the first half of his tenure. His own horse has faded in the stretch in each race it's raced.