The best news for Yankee fans isn’t about the seven reinforcements they’ve got coming over the hill. No, the better news is that it’s official that the people in charge — that means the owner and the general manager — are actually listening to them.
So a year after the Yankees didn’t do nearly enough at the trade deadline, Brian Cashman just went all mad scientist on us. He expanded his team’s depth, shortened games the rest of the way, gave himself options at shortstop if Anthony Volpe’s defense doesn’t improve.
Cashman did a lot, despite the way the new guys fell down on Friday night in Miami. David Stearns, still pretty much the new guy working for Steve Cohen, did a lot. Going forward, we might begin to find out if Stearns will get anything even close to the historic runway — and leeway — that Cashman has been given, first by Steinbrenner the Father and now Steinbrenner the Son. But both Cashman and Stearns got after it this week the way you’re supposed to do it when you have jobs like theirs in this city. And is what the fans want to see.
Cashman knows full well by now, and Stearns is learning, that they’re in a hardball league and need to wear helmets. Certainly Cashman is far more of a lightning rod than Stearns will ever be. But that is just the way it goes when you have been on the job as long as he has, with the most famous sports franchise in this country, and one known around the world.
Does Cashman read it and hear it on social media? Yeah, he does. So does his manager. So did Tom Thibodeau before Jimmy Dolan got tired of him. Does anybody think Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll and John Mara especially haven’t gotten banged around with mean tweets from one end of X to the other? Get real. It all comes with the territory. This territory. John Mara’s father, Wellington, was famous for answering actual mail from Giants fans. How do you think that’s gone for his son over all the years since the Giants last won a Super Bowl?
But John is no victim, and shouldn’t be treated like one. Nor is Cashman, who had a better trade deadline than some of the spotty ones of the recent; years when better deals at the deadline might have made all the difference.
Again and again: There continues to be the spotty narrative that Yankee fans simply aren’t grateful enough about having one winning season after another. We’re supposed to believe that Yankee fans are a nation of George Steinbrenners, and that only winning the World Series could ever possibly be enough for them
In what world? Certainly not the real one. I know a lot of Yankee fans. Everybody knows a lot of Yankee fans. And their basic position continues to be this:
They don’t think they’re being unreasonable to think that a team with this brand and these resources maybe ought to have won more than one World Series in the last 25 years. Are some of the social media attacks personal. They are. Shocker. But in the end, when the passionate Yankee fans aren’t going tweet crazy, it’s not personal between them and Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman. It is their relationship with their team that is deeply personal. And they do have a right to expect more than one World Series title every quarter-century.
Without question, both Cashman and Stearns got busy on Thursday, did they ever. If the Yankees had brought in one more guy before we got to six o’clock on Thursday, they basically would have turned over a third of their roster over the past week. It’s why hey should really give the trade deadline a new nickname:
Makeover Day.
No kidding, if you’re keeping score at home, Cashman now employs five closers:
Luke Weaver, his closer last year and occasionally this year.
Devin Williams, who shouldn’t look back because a whole bunch of guys might be gaining on him.
David Bednar.
Camilo Doval.
Jake Bird.
The Mets also picked up two big bullpen arms in Ryan Helsley and Tyler Rogers. They got a center fielder they needed, and an exciting one, in Cedric Mullins. The Yankees got a reliable third baseman they desperately needed in Ryan McMahon, who’s done about as well as anybody could introducing himself to Yankee fans over his first week in town.
As usual, the moves the Yankees made had so much of the media, here and everywhere, nearly dizzy with excitement, as if the rest of the league and the rest of the sport should now be scared to come out of the clubhouse.
Brian Cashman still wants to be here, obviously. There are Yankee fans in their 20s who have only known him as the Yankee GM. And Hal obviously wants him to be here. We hear about how many teams would be lined up for Cashman if he ever left the Yankees. But he isn’t going anywhere. You wonder how many years David Stearns will have his job at Citi Field if he doesn’t eventually deliver a World Series to his owner.
Or put it another way:
It has been 15 years since the Yankees won it all. Do you think Stearns will get 15 years to get Steve Cohen a trip to the Canyon of Heroes?
Cashman and Stearns took their swings on Thursday. They weren’t the only ones. It happens to be why they went big. A.J. Preller did the same in San Diego. The Astros were players and so were the Blue Jays and so, of course, were the Dodgers. The Red Sox, nipping at the Yankees’ heels lately, picked up Dustin May from the Dodgers and Steven Matz, old Met, from the Cardinals. And guess what? When Red Sox fans didn’t think Craig Breslow, their general manager, did enough, he caught a beating on social media, too. Comes with the job, comes with the territory.
So Breslow hears it in Boston. So does John Henry, the Red Sox owner. He hears it bigtime even though his team has won four World Series to the Yankees’ one over the past two decades. Surely it feels personal to him, just because the relationship between Red Sox fans and their team is deeply personal.
Neither Cashman nor Stearns get a parade because of their Thursday makeovers. There is no way of knowing how the makeovers will work out. This is a results business for them the same as it is for everybody else. On Thursday at least they did more than spend money.
YANKS CLOSING IN ON RECORD, NO MORE PUTTING MIKAL IN THE CORNER & JERRY ALWAYS CHICKENS OUT …
Seriously? Don’t you think it’s at least a little funny that Hal Steinbrenner and Uncle Steve spent more than $600 million on what turned out to be first drafts?
I kind of do.
It used to be that you never had enough pitching in baseball.
Now you have to qualify it this way:
You can never have enough RELIEF pitching.
The Yankees having five closers — that is a world’s record, right?
I kept waiting to hear that they were bringing Mo back.
The “Ballard” TV series, from the great Michael Connelly, has turned out to be a worthy successor to all those years of Harry Bosch.
And it was a very cool thing to see Titus Welliver popping up as Bosch in a few of the “Ballard” episodes.
Oh, I was all over Liam Neeson in “The Naked Gun” this weekend.
Totally knew how great Neeson would be as Frank Drebin Jr.
At a time when newspapers in particular and the media business in general is under almost constant siege, I watched “All the President’s Men” this week just to remind myself of something:
That the ideals of this business are still worth fighting for, same as they were back when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein took on — and ultimately took down — Richard Nixon, the criminal inhabiting the Oval Office at that time.
Woodward and Bernstein wrote the book, of course.
William Goldman wrote a brilliant screenplay, one for which he won his second Academy Award.
For my money, it is still the best newspaper movie of all time.
I don’t think there’s anybody in town rooting against Anthony Volpe.
Nor should they be.
If the Knicks are paying Mikal Bridges that kind of money, you can bet your own money that Mike Brown’s offense isn’t going to have Bridges standing in the corner.
Whoever ends up being QB1 for the Giants, that guy just needs to throw Malik Nabers the damn ball.
It really was destiny that brought Stephen A. and my friend Christopher Russo together, wasn’t it?
As dazzling a hitter as Juan Soto is, the Mets can only be great if Francisco Lindor is great.
So to speak.
Marcus Stroman, we hardly knew ye.
That was certainly money well spent.
In what is more and more a 5-inning sport for starting pitchers, guys like Tarik Skubal and Garrett Cochet tower over everything because of the way they want to stay out there, right?
By the way?
If Craig Breslow, the Boston GM, is suddenly such a dope, how did he add Crochet and Alex Bregman and Aroldis Chapman to his team this year?
Nice to see that Luka Doncic is keeping himself up.
If you gave LeBron truth serum he’d probably tell you he’d rather be playing at the Garden.
Just because of the way Jerry Jones always folds his hand in these contract negotiations with star players, we need to start calling him “JACO Jones.”
As in: Jerry Always Chickens Out.
James Patterson and Mike Lupica’s new Jane Smith thriller, “The Hamptons Lawyer,” made its debut at No. 1 this week on the New York Times Best Seller List.
