2009 Yankees: Brian Cashman Lights a Fire Under Slumping Club

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. With the Yankees mired in a troubling slump and sinking in the AL East, general manager Brian Cashman went on the road to Atlanta to read the team the riot act, and it responded with a season-changing victory over the Braves.

ATLANTA (June 24, 2009) - It’s not often that Brian Cashman goes on the road with the Yankees during the regular season - not in 1998 when he first moved into the general manager role, not in 2009, and certainly not now in 2024, his head-shaking 26th season.

Go on the road to watch the progress of Yankees minor leaguers? Sure. Go out to scout another team’s prospects, either in the minors or at the major league level? Sure. But to follow the Yankees somewhere because things weren’t going well, and deliver a fire and brimstone speech to help the team snap out of a slump? No, that has never been Cashman’s thing.

One of the rare exceptions, however, came in late June of 2009. Given what had been going on for most of the month with the Yankees crashing and burning from one game up in the AL East to five games out, Cashman felt that flying down to Atlanta to join his slumping team was imperative.

To be clear, it’s not like Cashman’s plan was to burst into the clubhouse the way George Steinbrenner might have back in the day when he would make a bunch of blustery threats and maybe even act on them, like firing the manager, or trading an underperforming player.

No, Cashman’s primary reason for going to Atlanta was to support manager Joe Girardi who was already in the crosshairs of the New York media after the team missed the postseason in his first year at the helm, and was now in full retreat 2 ½ months into his second year.

However, the players knew Cashman was there because losing nine of their last 13 games, including the last three in a row, with the star-studded and expensive team he had put together was unacceptable and he told them so.

“He was a little fired up,” said $180 million man Mark Teixeira, who was experiencing his first dose of how things could be when the Yankees hit turbulence. “It’s not about getting new guys in here. It’s about, we have a good group of guys in here, let’s pick it up. There was no yelling; Cash isn’t that type of guy. But he was here, and he wanted to make himself known. You could just tell he means business. He wasn’t supposed to be here, he flew to Atlanta because we weren’t playing well. Sometimes the principal needs to show up in class if the teacher’s having trouble with the students.”

The biggest problem had been the lackluster offense which had scored just 18 runs in its last seven games, five of those ending in losses. And naturally, because Alex Rodriguez was a lightning rod, his particular struggles - a .207 average and just 15 extra-base hits in his first 41 games since his return on May 8 - was considered the root of the trouble.

“It’s not going to last, I promise you that,” Cashman said of the rut the Yankees were in, but also, A-Rod’s lack of production. “We’re too good for it to last. But the last three weeks of poor play is mostly due to our offense. We have to get our offense going. We’ve been pitching real well and letting that pitching go to waste.”

Whatever Cashman told the players, it sure didn’t seem like it mattered because after making those comments the day after a lifeless 4-0 loss in the opener of their series with the Braves, Cashman sat behind the plate at Turner Field and watched two nondescript Atlanta pitchers, Kenshin Kawakami and Kris Medlen, combine for five perfect innings to extend the Yankees’ scoreless innings streak to 14.

And when Joba Chamberlain blinked in the bottom of the fifth when he gave up a solo homer to Jeff Francoeur, it looked like another frustrating night was unfolding.

Instead, the game’s arc flipped on a dime in the top of the sixth. Brett Gardner broke up the perfect game by drawing a walk off Medlen, but then proceeded to get picked off first base. Girardi raced out to protest umpire Bill Welke’s call and replays showed that Gardner was safe. That didn’t matter in 2009 because there was no instant replay review, and all Girardi’s theatrics got him was an ejection. But it also served as a rallying point for his downtrodden club.

Rookie catcher Francisco Cervelli, who was awarded the start after Jorge Posada had struck out four times the night before, hit the first home run of his major league career, just clearing the wall in left field to tie the game. Dutifully awoken, with two outs Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon singled, Teixeira walked, and A-Rod came through with a two-run single on the fourth pitch he saw from reliever Jeff Bennett.

The Yankees would tack on five more runs in the final three innings to pull away for an 8-4 victory.

“When you know your manager has your back in every situation, it really shows to his players,” said Nick Swisher, who extended the Yankees lead to 4-1 in the seventh with a leadoff solo homer off Bennett. “When he did that, it was awesome. That really, really turned it on for us.”

Girardi didn’t come right out and admit it, but he absolutely tried to get ejected, and that’s not easy for a man who did not curse. He just felt his show of support for his players would give them a lift, and based on the final score, it apparently did.

“You can just stay out there and argue a long time,” Girardi said sharing the art of getting thrown out without using any of the words that trigger umpires. “Bobby (Cox, the Braves manager who got thrown out of more games than any manager in MLB history) does it a lot and it probably works for his club so maybe I took a page from his book. If we’ll score eight runs after I get ejected, I’ll do it when I take out the lineup card.”

Girardi’s ejection and Cervelli’s home run were the catalysts to the comeback, but without question the biggest moment was A-Rod coming through because that simply hadn’t happened very often since he returned from his spring training cyst removal.

Cashman left Atlanta following the game, his work done, but before he did, he once again shared his faith in the job Girardi was doing.

“He’s not slumped over, he’s not down and out, woe-is-me, depressed, on edge or tight,” Cashman said. “He’s keeping guys up, keeping them positive. I hear the messages he sends to them. He’s doing everything he needs to do. The reason I’m here is I’ve got to be doing everything I need to be doing, and ultimately, we believe that will translate onto the field. I think Joe has done an exceptional job, it’s as simple as that.”

For his part, Girardi appreciated the support, but he also knew that Cashman’s vote of confidence only meant that he would live to manage one more day because that’s just how it was for Yankees managers.

“I know the drill here,” Girardi said. “You win or you go home. I know what we have to do as a club. For me to spend time worrying about that, to me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have to worry about what we’re doing on the field.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 11 went for the Yankees:

• June 23: The Yankees limped into Atlanta after a disappointing week where they lost two of three games at home to the Nationals, and then two of three to the Marlins in Miami. Their offensive struggles were clear, and then they opened their series in Atlanta with the 4-0 loss and all of the sudden Cashman was on a plane, postponing a trip he was supposed to make to watch injured outfielder Xavier Nady in a Triple-A rehab game. Atlanta’s Tommy Hanson and three relievers blanked the Yankees on four hits.

• June 25: Funny how things work in baseball. The Yankees couldn’t hit a lick, but they scored eight in the middle game of the series, then rolled to an 11-7 victory in the rubber game. They pounded out 16 hits, Jeter had four of them and scored four times and A-Rod went 3-for-5 with a homer and four RBI.

• June 26: Back to New York, though not to the Bronx. The second half of the Subway Series took place at Citi Field and the Yankees swept all three, giving them five wins in six games against their crosstown rival. In the 9-1 opener, more offensive fireworks as Gardner ripped out five hits including a home run and a triple, scored three runs and drove in two, and A-Rod belted a two-run homer to back CC Sabathia’s elite seven-inning performance.

• June 27: Posada’s three-run homer capped a four-run outburst in the sixth against Mets starter and Rochester native Tim Redding, and that was more than enough for A.J. Burnett, Brian Bruney and David Robertson who combined on a three-hit shutout in a 5-0 win.

• June 28: In the 4-2 finale, Teixeira’s two-run double helped the Yankees grab a 3-0 first-inning and they made that hold up as Chien-Ming Wang earned his first victory after six defeats with help from 3.2 hitless innings of relief from Phil Coke, Phil Hughes, Bruney and Mariano Rivera who earned the 500th save of his career. “If we get this guy straight, we’re going to have a fun summer,” Posada said of Wang, words that would come back to bite him within a couple weeks.

NEXT SATURDAY: Already in the midst of a terrible season, Chien-Ming Wang hurt his arm, walked off the Yankee Stadium mound on the Fourth of July, and as it turned out, he never threw another pitch for the Yankees.