Brian Cashman has had the full Yankee experience over the last 15 years: chewed out by The Boss, ripped in the newspapers and criticized in a book written by a former manager, Joe Torre. Along the way, he probably wondered if a job in Baltimore or Kansas City might be better for his health than attempting to navigate through the chaos that goes with being one of the people in charge of the most important sports franchise on the planet.
No one -- and I mean no one -- believed Cashman would last when George Steinbrenner named him general manager of the Yankees on this day 15 years ago. He was just 30 years old, and even though he'd played second base at Catholic University, he was seen more as an academician than a baseball guy.
At the time of his hiring, it was still a novel concept that a successful general manager could be someone not strictly from the world of baseball scouting. To hire someone who was smart and organized, who knew to surround himself with competent people and who saw the value in both traditional scouting as well as data-driven analysis required a vision and courage to see things differently.
Besides, Yankee general managers didn't last very long under Steinbrenner. Cashman was his 14th in 25 years, and if Gene Michael and Bob Watson and so many other competent men couldn't please The Boss, what chance did young Brian Cashman have?
Now he's about to begin his 16th Spring Training as Yankees general manager, and in the wake of Hal Steinbrenner taking over day-to-day operations even before his dad died in 2010, Cashman appears to have as much power and influence as almost any general manager in the game.
In recent years, Cashman has overseen a transformation of the Yankees' baseball operations. They remain heavily invested in traditional scouting methods but have also embraced the full Moneyball analysis. In an interview with MLB Network Radio on Sunday, Cashman said that groundbreaking analyst Bill James' influence on the game has been so profound that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame conversation.
Cashman -- with Hal Steinbrenner, obviously -- has steered the Yankees away from the wild spending sprees of past years. Instead, Cashman has attempted to construct baseball's best Minor League system. To do that, he needed to be great in terms of scouting, coaching, etc.
"We want Draft day to be the most important day of the year," he has said.
That Minor League system will be critical in the years ahead as the Yankees say they're committed to being under baseball's $189 million luxury-tax threshold by Opening Day 2014.
The Yankees have spent cautiously for a second straight offseason but due to past commitments still have a payroll over $200 million in 2013. As Cashman said, "We're not going to apologize for having money. That's part of The Boss' legacy."
Rather than set the market, he has allowed the market to return to him, landing Hiroki Kuroda shortly after the start of Spring Training a year ago and getting Travis Hafner and Kevin Youkilis in recent weeks.
His scorecard has not been perfect. He whiffed on Carl Pavano and Kevin Brown, among others, but has still done far more right than wrong. In the last five years, his farm system has produced an assembly line of gifted arms: Phil Hughes, David Robertson, David Phelps, Ivan Nova and Joba Chamberlain.
His 16th season on the job begins at a particularly challenging time. With an aging roster, the Yankees have a smaller margin for error than usual. They need Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia to stay healthy and for Mark Teixeira, Curtis Granderson and Youkilis to have productive seasons. And they need more of their young talent to start pushing for spots on the Major League roster.
Cashman's legacy is that the Yankees made 13 playoff appearances in 14 years and went to the World Series six years, winning it four times. Money aside, he has made the Yankees' baseball department as respected as any in the game and produced a generation of executives -- Damon Oppenheimer, Billy Eppler, etc. -- who could probably land jobs as general managers if they choose to.
Regardless of how 2013 plays out, Cashman's legacy seems secure. He took over the Yankees at a time when Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada were on their way to defining another era of Yankee dominance.
Cashman -- along with the Steinbrenner family, Jeter and others -- has kept it going. The Yankees have won just one championship the last 11 seasons, but they've been in the mix every year. As legacies go -- and especially Yankee legacies -- that's not a bad one.
Richard Justice is a columnist for MLB.com. Read his blog, Justice4U. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Cashman's legacy one to admire 15 years later
Dengan url
https://nokiaponselpintar.blogspot.com/2013/02/cashmans-legacy-one-to-admire-15-years.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Cashman's legacy one to admire 15 years later
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Cashman's legacy one to admire 15 years later
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar