RealGM

Around with Cashman too much? What I mean, is that he seems to be placing a lot of blame on cashman and not the players. He has made several comments about cashman in the papers this year and some may feel that it may push cashman away to either seattle or philly. Hank said he wants cash back, but with all of this going on and the possibility of cashman losing some power, do you think that Hank just needs to shut up and try to mend any fences with cash and try hard as hell to keep him here? I like cash, I like the way he has built up our farm system with quality arms, but do you guys think it is time for cash to go and we move in another direction? Any thoughts?

Idk, Cash has had total control for 3 seasons now and there have been just as many questionable personnel moves as good ones. He's stockpiled young arms which is nice, but it seems like the Yankees are still the same aging, overpaid guys that we would blame George for. Idk if I trust Cashman on picking out major league pitchers through trades/FA either (Hawkins and Kei are first to come to mind). I just think the Yanks could use a new direction.

P.S. That's not to take away from his deadline work this year, even though it hasn't worked out favorably he made brilliant deals for Nady, Marte, and Pudge...the problem is he didn't add a starter so we've been watching Ponson and Rasner for weeks too long.

j4remi wrote:Idk, Cash has had total control for 3 seasons now and there have been just as many questionable personnel moves as good ones. He's stockpiled young arms which is nice, but it seems like the Yankees are still the same aging, overpaid guys that we would blame George for. Idk if I trust Cashman on picking out major league pitchers through trades/FA either (Hawkins and Kei are first to come to mind). I just think the Yanks could use a new direction.

P.S. That's not to take away from his deadline work this year, even though it hasn't worked out favorably he made brilliant deals for Nady, Marte, and Pudge...the problem is he didn't add a starter so we've been watching Ponson and Rasner for weeks too long.

good points, and I would not mind having someone who had a good eye for position players. We now have enough young arms to take us into the future, but we don't have those stud position players. I agree, this lineup is aging and have been crying for the past couple of years to revamp this thing.. It caught up to us this year..... And even with rasner and Ponson starting(who really hasn't been that bad) we still should be and would have been 10 games better had we had some decent hitting this year.... Our hitting and defense(notably damon in CF) has been atrocious... we let way too many average pitchers dominate us this year, not just beat us, but dominate us.. that never used to happen.. those guys pitching vs us in the past was almost a guaranteed win..

Hank can't exactly bash the players. If he does he lowers their value around the league and makes NY a little less hospitable to potential FA. I think Cashman has enough support to be back if he wants to.

As for his track record. It's somewhat hard to judge his autonomy for 3 years. Where would he be making improvements, nearly every position was locked up long term. The places where he could make moves were CF and 2B. He signed Damon, which was solid. Not amazing but solid especially considering what other free agents were demanding. Cano has been pretty good although not so good this year. I guess you could take issue with Pavano but everyone wanted him, he was coming off a great year, he wasn't injury prone and he took less money to play here. When both Matsui and Sheffield went down, getting Abreu was excellent. He gave up nothing to get him and the only potentially decent prospect he gave up (C.J. Henry) he got back later. Marte, Nady and Pudge were great this year too. Betemit for Procter is arguable but consider that Procter was a few innings away from serious arm issues and he hasn't been effective since makes you believe that it was shrewd. Betemit just didn't work out. Remember it was also Cashman who got Shawn Chacon for nothing but cash before he became a pariah. He was the one who brought back Pettitte and Mussina for cheap, short term deals.

You need to give him serious credit for the farm system. Picking in the upper 20s every year he has developed a very good farm system. I know people want to blame him for Rasner and Ponson this year but those two guys weren't even plan B or C, those guys got hurt. People were expecting Horne to do well this year and potentially bolster the rotation, if someone failed. He got hurt. Joba was waiting in the wings but he got hurt. Hughes got hurt. Wang got hurt. Pettitte was completely ineffective.

One could argue the offense this year was his fault but it was pretty much the same offense that scored 950 runs last year. Where was he supposed to make changes? Posada is at C and there were no better alternatives last year. Arod at 3B. Jeter at SS. Cano at 2B. Giambi at 1B. Abreu in RF. Matsui at DH. Damon in LF and Melky in CF. Yeah he could have gotten Torii Hunter, I suppose, but I remember everyone saying how the Angels overpaid for him. You can't for things that were set up before he had autonomy. -Jitpal

Jitpal wrote:Hank can't exactly bash the players. If he does he lowers their value around the league and makes NY a little less hospitable to potential FA. I think Cashman has enough support to be back if he wants to.

As for his track record. It's somewhat hard to judge his autonomy for 3 years. Where would he be making improvements, nearly every position was locked up long term. The places where he could make moves were CF and 2B. He signed Damon, which was solid. Not amazing but solid especially considering what other free agents were demanding. Cano has been pretty good although not so good this year. I guess you could take issue with Pavano but everyone wanted him, he was coming off a great year, he wasn't injury prone and he took less money to play here. When both Matsui and Sheffield went down, getting Abreu was excellent. He gave up nothing to get him and the only potentially decent prospect he gave up (C.J. Henry) he got back later. Marte, Nady and Pudge were great this year too. Betemit for Procter is arguable but consider that Procter was a few innings away from serious arm issues and he hasn't been effective since makes you believe that it was shrewd. Betemit just didn't work out. Remember it was also Cashman who got Shawn Chacon for nothing but cash before he became a pariah. He was the one who brought back Pettitte and Mussina for cheap, short term deals.

You need to give him serious credit for the farm system. Picking in the upper 20s every year he has developed a very good farm system. I know people want to blame him for Rasner and Ponson this year but those two guys weren't even plan B or C, those guys got hurt. People were expecting Horne to do well this year and potentially bolster the rotation, if someone failed. He got hurt. Joba was waiting in the wings but he got hurt. Hughes got hurt. Wang got hurt. Pettitte was completely ineffective.

One could argue the offense this year was his fault but it was pretty much the same offense that scored 950 runs last year. Where was he supposed to make changes? Posada is at C and there were no better alternatives last year. Arod at 3B. Jeter at SS. Cano at 2B. Giambi at 1B. Abreu in RF. Matsui at DH. Damon in LF and Melky in CF. Yeah he could have gotten Torii Hunter, I suppose, but I remember everyone saying how the Angels overpaid for him. You can't for things that were set up before he had autonomy. -Jitpal

I don't know man. First of all, I am not one who is going to jump on the "we should have gotten Johan santanna" bandwagon like the NY post did this weekend.. But we were weak in the outfield and first base, that has been a problem the past couple of years. Our first base situation is a joke, especially defensively, melky regressed, but we never had a real replacement for him as we sent him down this year, did we overvalue melky? how about cano? we have some holes to fill, and we made some mistakes this year. Missing the playoffs hurt, and next year won't be tolerated!!

TKF wrote:I don't know man. First of all, I am not one who is going to jump on the "we should have gotten Johan santanna" bandwagon like the NY post did this weekend.. But we were weak in the outfield and first base, that has been a problem the past couple of years. Our first base situation is a joke, especially defensively, melky regressed, but we never had a real replacement for him as we sent him down this year, did we overvalue melky? how about cano? we have some holes to fill, and we made some mistakes this year. Missing the playoffs hurt, and next year won't be tolerated!!

It would have been a bad move to get Santana for what they were asking. Players+Money is bad. One or the other is ok, but both is bad business. Yeah Melky regressed but he was playing gold glove caliber defense last year hitting .273. Not great but 23 years old, so you figure he would get better. Plus, he would be the number nine hitter, if the biggest problem in the offense is the number nine hitter is hitting .280 with gold glove defense, that isn't really a problem. The issue came when with all the injuries to Posada, Matsui etc. he was forced to bat 6th or 7th. For reference in his 147 AB hitting 9th he did hit .286. Should he have played better when others went down, absolutely, but Melky's role in the offense should not have been a factor.

I agree first base is a problem and it baffled me that we didn't have a credible backup 1B. If you remember before the season started, I was clamoring for Sean Casey. Solid defense, veteran hitter and a good clubhouse guy. Instead we get Ensberg, who was a colossal failure here, for more money. I'm assuming it was a calculated risk that if Ensberg got back to where he was with PEDs, that the Yanks would have a very solid player on the bench. Again though, it's something that should not have mattered. A backup corner infielder should not make or break this team.

Cano really did help break this team. Once Matsui and Posada went down no one was there to pick it up. Matsui and Posada's roles should not be diminished, they accounted for roughly 45-50 home runs and 200 RBI. More than that both were professional hitters and always got big, big hits. They were the grinders in the offense, the guys who wore down other batters. These were the guys that when pitchers walked or gave up hits to Jeter, Abreu and Arod said "F$%& now we have to deal with these two!" They made Giambi and Cano the 7th and 8th hitters but when they went down they were forced to become 5th and 6th hitters. They couldn't get it done early, Arod started pressing and there went the offense.

One could make similarities to when Sheffield and Matsui went down in 2006 but it wasn't the same. In 2006, the other teams in the AL East weren't as good. Cano stepped in and hit .342 and Melky hit .280 with gold glove defense. They kept pace. They had pitchers go down but Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small had huge career years and somehow kept winning games. This year Ponson and Rasner didn't do that.

If you think about it we were doing ok until Wang went down. At that point in the year, there was a good feeling whenever Wang and Moose went out there. People were talking about Wang having a shot at the Cy Young award. Then when Wang went down, it looked the team just felt it didn't have enough. Then the all-star break ended and Joba came in and was out-pitching everybody. Then Joba goes down and the team just lost it.

They mentally lost their edge, they lost that "We are the Yankees, we can beat anyone, anytime, and anywhere" mentality. Where was that lost from, was it because Posada, the vocal leader, wasn't out there everyday? Was it because they felt without Torre they couldn't do it? Was it because they just couldn't hit with RISP or perhaps the mental breakdown was the cause of the RISP deficiency. Was there two much pressure with it being the last year of the stadium? A lot of questions and probably not many answers. Whatever the case, next year will be better. -Jitpal

i think kay, cone, and oneill had a good point during todays game. a lot of teams come into yankee stadium and bring their A game since its the last season at the stadium. yanks haven't really been doing a great job at home.

Jitpal wrote:

TKF wrote:I don't know man. First of all, I am not one who is going to jump on the "we should have gotten Johan santanna" bandwagon like the NY post did this weekend.. But we were weak in the outfield and first base, that has been a problem the past couple of years. Our first base situation is a joke, especially defensively, melky regressed, but we never had a real replacement for him as we sent him down this year, did we overvalue melky? how about cano? we have some holes to fill, and we made some mistakes this year. Missing the playoffs hurt, and next year won't be tolerated!!

It would have been a bad move to get Santana for what they were asking. Players+Money is bad. One or the other is ok, but both is bad business. Yeah Melky regressed but he was playing gold glove caliber defense last year hitting .273. Not great but 23 years old, so you figure he would get better. Plus, he would be the number nine hitter, if the biggest problem in the offense is the number nine hitter is hitting .280 with gold glove defense, that isn't really a problem. The issue came when with all the injuries to Posada, Matsui etc. he was forced to bat 6th or 7th. For reference in his 147 AB hitting 9th he did hit .286. Should he have played better when others went down, absolutely, but Melky's role in the offense should not have been a factor.

I agree first base is a problem and it baffled me that we didn't have a credible backup 1B. If you remember before the season started, I was clamoring for Sean Casey. Solid defense, veteran hitter and a good clubhouse guy. Instead we get Ensberg, who was a colossal failure here, for more money. I'm assuming it was a calculated risk that if Ensberg got back to where he was with PEDs, that the Yanks would have a very solid player on the bench. Again though, it's something that should not have mattered. A backup corner infielder should not make or break this team.

Cano really did help break this team. Once Matsui and Posada went down no one was there to pick it up. Matsui and Posada's roles should not be diminished, they accounted for roughly 45-50 home runs and 200 RBI. More than that both were professional hitters and always got big, big hits. They were the grinders in the offense, the guys who wore down other batters. These were the guys that when pitchers walked or gave up hits to Jeter, Abreu and Arod said "F$%& now we have to deal with these two!" They made Giambi and Cano the 7th and 8th hitters but when they went down they were forced to become 5th and 6th hitters. They couldn't get it done early, Arod started pressing and there went the offense. One could make similarities to when Sheffield and Matsui went down in 2006 but it wasn't the same. In 2006, the other teams in the AL East weren't as good. Cano stepped in and hit .342 and Melky hit .280 with gold glove defense. They kept pace. They had pitchers go down but Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small had huge career years and somehow kept winning games. This year Ponson and Rasner didn't do that.

If you think about it we were doing ok until Wang went down. At that point in the year, there was a good feeling whenever Wang and Moose went out there. People were talking about Wang having a shot at the Cy Young award. Then when Wang went down, it looked the team just felt it didn't have enough. Then the all-star break ended and Joba came in and was out-pitching everybody. Then Joba goes down and the team just lost it.

They mentally lost their edge, they lost that "We are the Yankees, we can beat anyone, anytime, and anywhere" mentality. Where was that lost from, was it because Posada, the vocal leader, wasn't out there everyday? Was it because they felt without Torre they couldn't do it? Was it because they just couldn't hit with RISP or perhaps the mental breakdown was the cause of the RISP deficiency. Was there two much pressure with it being the last year of the stadium? A lot of questions and probably not many answers. Whatever the case, next year will be better. -Jitpal

great analaysis.. Losing posada and matsui will hurt any lineup, I don't think there is any team that could survive the type of injuries we did, and when those guys went out, as you said, it force guys like melky and cano into more prominant roles, roles they probably were not ready for... Then you add in the loss of wang and that is roughly 19 wins... just think about it, lets say wang gets up 18 wins, and keeps us close in another 5-10 games, we would probably be leading the division. I hate to make excuses, but these are valid points, espically the way you broke it down... I suspect with a healthy team, and our pitching staff ready to go, and I mean hughes and joba completly healthy, I think we will be back on top next year.... but we have to make some changes, we need another outfielder and to solve the first base issue..