Photo: Corey Sipkin
Yankees fans expressed their outrage about the state of their team by pelting baseballs all over the field and booing the players during the Yankees’ 8-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday night at Yankee Stadium.
It did not get better the rest of the weekend. The Rays swept the Yankees by taking a 6-3 victory on Saturday afternoon and a 4-2 victory on Sunday afternoon. The boos sounded louder. Contempt towards the team filled the air.
For good measure, the Yankees basically told Jay Bruce to retire or be released. Bruce did the former. Yes, they may not tell him directly to retire, but their actions suggested otherwise by not playing him anymore after going 4-for-34 with a home run and 13 strikeouts.
It’s easy to blame Bruce, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks, Corey Kluber, Jameson Taillon and Yankees manager Aaron Boone for everything that has gone wrong for the 5-10 Yankees. They deserve it. But if there is a culprit that symbolized everything that has gone wrong for this underachieving baseball team, it’s Yankees general manager Brian Cashman.
Who did not foresee this team going through a malaise by hiring Boone to replace a great manager in Joe Girardi a few years ago? Yes, Girardi overmanaged. He grated on people. He came off intense for his own good. Despite all that, he also knew how to manage and win games.
To not renew Girardi to a new contract after the Yankees fell short of a game from going to the World Series by losing Game 7 to Houston Astros in the American League Championship Series and replace him with a neophyte manager made no sense. Not when the Yankees seemed primed to win a championship with a nucleus growing at the time in Sanchez, Judge and Torres.
Boone never managed a game in his life, and it was risky to hire him while the Yankees were going well. There was an issue at play obviously. Cashman wanted a manager to follow orders from him in playing certain players on a given night based on data that would favor them in a matchup. Boone would be more than happy to do so while a proud manager like Girardi would understandably not do so.
Cashman forced Boone to start an opener rather than start Masahiro Tanaka in last season’s Game 2 of the American League Division Series after the Yankees started off the series against the Rays with a Game 1 victory on an impressive performance by Gerrit Cole. Delvi Garcia started Game 2, and he handed the ball to J.A. Happ in the second inning. Not surprisingly, everything went awry when the Rays knocked Happ around for four runs in 2 ⅔ innings.
It was stupid to use an opener. The Rays can get away with it since they need to be resourceful in maximizing the most out of their roster. The Yankees should be above this gimmick. They should have gone for the kill here with Tanaka starting Game 2. After all, he gave the Yankees the best chance to go up by two games based on his postseason pedigree. Yes, the Yankees lost the series in Game 5 on Mike Brosseau’s home run off Aroldis Chapman on a 10-pitch at-bat eighth inning, but it didn’t have to come down to that game and that inning.
Yes, there was no guarantee the Yankees would have won if Tanaka pitched Game 2. It would have given them a chance. Instead, it gave the Rays a much-needed boost.
This is where a manager that manages on his own intuition matters. There’s no way Girardi would start an opener in the playoffs whatsoever. Apparently, Cashman thought it was a good idea and it burned him and the Yankees.
The Yankees players will not say it publicly, but there’s no way they were happy about Cashman’s decision to be involved in a manager’s decision to start an opener. When Boone happily obliged, he lost his players from there. There was no reason for the Yankees to play for Boone anymore knowing that he really is not in change. They saw through this, and it can’t be surprising if some of the players quit playing for Boone right there. When a general manager undermines his own manager to make decisions on who to play, it would be hard for the players to respect the manager, let alone play for him.
Cashman deserves blame for other reasons. For one thing, he constructed a lineup that is home run or bust. He cited the importance of having big-hairy monsters that can hit home runs at the right-field porch aka the short porch. This works well in the summer, but in October, the Yankees need to play small ball to win games such as stealing bases, moving runners up and bunting. They don’t have the personnel to do that, and this is on Cashman for building a flawed roster that can’t win in October. This flawed lineup also features way too many righties.
Second of all, Cashman should take a hit for Judge, Sanchez and Torres regressing. He did not hire a competent coaching staff to work with them. The poor coaching has had in hand in all this. Just look at their lack of discipline at the plate and baserunning. Players should take the blame, but coaches are being paid to work and develop them. Girardi and his staff did while Boone and his staff have not. By hiring a coaching staff that would preach positivity rather than being critical, it made the young players worse.
Finally, the Yankees general manager staked the Yankees’ hopes on signing Kluber and acquiring Taillon to complement Cole. This sounded flaw from the beginning. First of all, Kluber has been injury-prone for years now. While he hasn’t gotten hurt yet, he hasn’t been the pitcher he was when he was with the Indians. It’s doubtful he ever will be the same guy again. This was a risk itself. To expect Taillon to pitch like a star, especially coming off a Tommy John surgery, this was foolish thinking. The Yankees needed to get a proven starter that knew how to win in October, not rely on a reclamation project.
It shouldn’t be surprising the Yankees are where they are now. They likely will heat up as the season goes on. They should make the playoffs. But forget about winning championship No. 28 this season. This roster does not have it.
Yankees fans know it, too. They weren’t excited when the season started, and now they let their boos do the talking for them.
It’s no wonder why Cashman trended on Twitter after Friday night’s game.
He created everything that is wrong with this Yankees team.
