Yankees GM Brian Cashman Calls 2023 Season 'A Disaster'

The misery continues as the Yankees couldn’t even win a series against the Nationals at home. They dropped two of three, but at least they snapped their nine-game losing streak. They are now 61-66 and in last place in the AL East, 6.5 games behind the fourth-place Red Sox with 35 games to go. It’s happening folks. They are gonna finish in last place for the first time since 1990, and just the fourth time in their 121-year history. Let’s get to it.

Brian Cashman looked like a defeated man as he sat behind the Yankee logoed microphone Wednesday, and for good reason. This miserable Yankees season, for which he is rightly receiving much of the blame for, has taken its toll on the general manager.

“It’s been a disaster,” he said of 2023. Yeah, I think we can all agree on that.

Yet it is almost a certainty that Cashman, like that annoying fly at the picnic, is going to live on. There’s almost zero chance that Hal Steinbrenner is firing his long-time GM who just signed a fresh four-year contract. Hal loves to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in any number of revenue-stream ways, but it kills him to piss away tens of millions when it comes to bad contracts, whether it’s the GM, the manager, or the players.

Cashman is staying put, and Aaron Boone will probably be scapegoated. Though it really isn’t scapegoating because as you’ve seen in this newsletter time and time again, I think Boone is a lousy in-game manager. If he gets fired, it will be well deserved.

No, this mess isn’t entirely on him. And sure, the players seem to like him and all that, but there have just been too many times when Boone has made poor decisions, whether it’s lineups, calls to the bullpen, or situational stuff, and the time has come for the Yankees to hire some fresh blood.

“I think it’s all gonna be evaluated,’’ Cashman said, obviously leaving himself out of that equation. “We’ll look at every aspect of the operation. It takes us where it takes us. Stay tuned. We’ll all be evaluated, including myself. Unfortunately, we’re gonna have some time to do that.”

What bothers me is that the area that might be in the biggest need of change probably won’t see much. The scouting, development, and analytics staffs that Cashman has put together have simply failed this team in recent years.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good track record, a pretty good run of success,” Cashman said.

Cashman was speaking about the fact that he has never had a team that finished with a losing record since he became GM in 1998. And that’s true, but that’s mainly because few teams spend as much on free agents as the Yankees, not because they have produced a farm system like the Rays or the Astros that just keeps churning out stars and/or competent, productive major leaguers.

The Yankees do not draft players who go on to become stars, they just don’t, so their amateur scouting has to be improved. Just as important, they have failed to identify and sign players in the robust international market. And even when they do find someone with great potential, most of those players get to the Bronx and then stall and don’t seem to improve.

And then there’s Cashman’s trade record the last few years which has been abhorrent. Just look at the names who have either been bums, or gotten hurt and provided no help, or both: Giancarlo Stanton, Joey Gallo, Josh Donaldson, Frankie Montas, Clint Frazier, Andrew Benintendi, Andrew Heaney, Harrison Bader, Scott Effross, J.A. Happ, and Lou Trivino to name a few.

They have a roster filled with players who are in decline, and several have enormous contracts that can’t be moved which will prevent the Yankees from making the sweeping changes they need. That’s not on Boone; that’s on the people above him.

As for this season, yes, everything that could have possibly gone wrong has and Cashman offered that as a reason for this mess. “I don’t think anybody on this planet, entering or leaving spring training, believed this wasn’t a playoff-contention team,” Cashman said. “I certainly didn’t. At the same time, shit happens and a lot of it happened. And it’s on our hands.”

He’s wrong about that. I, for one, was not all that high on this team. In the March 27 edition of Pinstripe People, this is what I wrote in my season preview: “I expect the Yankees to surpass 90 wins just as they have 20 times in the last 26 years (not counting the 2020 COVID year). But I’m not sure that will be good enough to win the rugged AL East where Toronto and Tampa Bay are legitimate threats, Baltimore is a team on the rise, and Boston is, well, always a pain in the ass. And I certainly don’t see this Yankees team overtaking the Astros in the American League.”

I whiffed thinking they’d win 90 just like Cashman, but I was right about everything else. I just didn’t think it would be as bad as it has been.

Here are my observations on the three games against the Nationals.

Aug. 22: Nationals 2, Yankees 1

➤ Nine losses in a row. As Yankees fans, that’s simply incomprehensible. They hadn’t lost nine in row since 1982, a year in which they had three different managers. Here’s a wild stat: Since 1982, the Yankees have had 41 winning streaks of at least nine games, but never a nine-game losing streak. Yeah, this team is special.

➤ This was yet another absolutely putrid offensive performance as they managed two hits the entire night, both by weak-hitting (which is putting it mildly) catcher Ben Rortvedt, a solo homer and a single. Nats starter Josiah Gray became the 50th opposing pitcher this season to go at least six innings with two or fewer runs allowed against the Yankees. In this day and age when starting pitchers rarely make it through six innings, that’s an incredible statistic.

➤ The highlight of the night came after the fourth inning when radio analyst Suzyn Waldman, not realizing she was still on the air, said, “God, this is so boring.” Have truer words ever been spoken?

➤ Carlos Rodon returned and finally he looked like the pitcher they thought they were signing. I couch that because even though they won the game, the Nationals aren’t exactly a powerhouse. Still, Rodon threw only 68 pitches across six innings and gave up one run on six hits with no walks. One of the hits was a solo homer by Carter Kieboom who was playing in Rochester a week ago.

➤ Tommy Kahnle took the loss because he gave up a solo homer to C.J. Abrams in the eighth which decided the game.

➤ Judge went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, part of a lineup that, outside of Rortvedt, went 0-for-27. And so much for the juice that call-ups Oswald Peraza and Everson Pereira were supposed to provide. Pereira walked in his first MLB at bat but then had two groundouts and a flyout. Peraza was 0-for-4 and he’s now hitting .161 in his time up with the Yankees this year.

➤ By night’s end, they had stretched their hard to fathom streak to 61 consecutive innings without having a lead. It’s the third-longest such streak in franchise history behind a 63-inning stretch set in 1906 before they were the Yankees, and a 62-inning period at the end of 2000 when they coughed and wheezed into the playoffs but then went on to win the World Series.

BOX SCORE

Aug. 23: Yankees 9, Nationals 1

➤ Understanding that Judge is clearly not 100 percent, it was also a fact that he’s been a colossal disappointment since he returned. Before this game he’d played in 22 since coming off the IL, the Yankees had gone 6-16, and he was batting .222 with just five homers and eight RBI. But then he reminded us who he can be in this game when he slugged three home runs for the first time in his career, one of them a grand slam, for a six-RBI night.

➤ Because of this rare offensive explosion by the Yankees - well, OK, it was really just Judge - they avoided their first 10-game losing streak since 1913 when they dropped 13 in a row.

➤ Before scoring nine runs in this game, the Yankees had scored only 10 in the previous six games. Also, Judge’s first-inning homer snapped the streak of consecutive innings without a lead at 61. So, all of that was nice, not that it means anything now.

➤ Luis Severino wasn’t the worst pitcher in MLB, a claim that he has made multiple times recently. Severino was very good as he flashed the Sevy of old before all the injuries derailed his career. Granted, the Nationals’ lineup isn’t great, but Sevy locked them down on one hit for 6.2 scoreless innings, easily his best outing this year. But before anyone starts thinking that he’s fixed, he struck out only two of the 24 batters he faced and he induced only five swings and misses on his 97 pitches. That’s worrisome and indicates that his stuff isn’t fooling anyone. In this game, it just so happened that the Nationals couldn’t barrel anything up.

BOX SCORE

Aug. 24: Nationals 6, Yankees 5

➤ God forbid the Yankees build on their victory from the night before. Instead, they went right back to playing lousy baseball and lost the series to the god damn Washington Nationals. This team couldn’t even win a series against a team comprised mostly of young veterans or players who probably belong down in Rochester. The Yankees have now played 15 series since the start of July and they’ve won one - against the horrific Royals. They have lost 11 and split three.

➤ Bullpen game and the only two guys who stunk were the two who are supposed to be among their best relievers - Kahnle and Clay Holmes. Kahnle was handed a 3-1 lead in the seventh when he came in for Jhony Brito with a man on second and one out. Kahnle struck out Riley Adams, and then the roof caved in. He gave up an RBI single to Jake Alu, a two-run homer to Alex Call, and a solo homer to Abrams - who homered off him Tuesday - and just like that it was 5-3.

➤ Kahnle did not give up a run in his first 17 appearances after he came off the IL. Since then, he’s been pretty bad. In his 17 games since his ERA is 6.00 and the reason is as plain as day, at least to me: It’s because he relies too much on his changeup. It’s hard for me to believe that Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake hasn’t figured out that Kahnle’s over-reliance on his beloved changeup is killing him. All three of those hits came on his changeup, but he just keeps throwing it 80 percent of the time. “It seems like guys are starting to catch on that that’s my go-to pitch,” Kahnle said. Yeah, ya think?

➤ Then in the ninth, Holmes allowed a cheap insurance run to score and it proved critical. He got one out, then caught a break when Judge threw out Alu trying to stretch a single into a double. But with two outs and no one on, it all fell apart. Holmes gave up a single to left, an infield single to second base, and he hit Lane Thomas with a pitch to load the bases. Lastly, another weak contact nubber by Joey Meneses between the mound and third, Holmes fumbled it and the insurance run that ultimately won the game scored.

➤ Of course, the Yankees were back to making stupid mistakes. Kyle Higashioka got thrown out at third trying to advance on a ball hit to short which just can’t happen, yet it has happened so many times to the Yankees. Moments later, Peraza, who hit that ball to short, got picked off first. Anthony Volpe booted a routine two-out grounder in the third that allowed the Nationals to score their first run. And then in the ninth, Torres made yet another baserunning blunder. With Peraza at second, the Yankees called for a double steal. Peraza cruised into third with no throw but Torres, who wasn’t even being held on at first base, did not advance to second. And naturally it came back to haunt the Yankees because Stanton singled to left, a ball that Torres probably would have been able to score on if he was at second where he should have been. It’s just a bad baseball team that plays the game so fundamentally poorly.

➤ Hey, Stanton had a day. Four hits including a home run and two RBI. Yes, stunning is what that was. In his previous 11 games he had four hits combined with just one RBI. Judge homered again, but he also left runners on base in three other at bats including one in the ninth.

BOX SCORE

 ➤ Aug. 25, 2011: Things weren’t looking so hot after three innings when the A’s raced out to a 7-1 lead against Yankees starter Phil Hughes. And then things changed in a big hurry as the Yankees became the first team in major league history to hit three grand slams in one game in what turned into a 22-9 blowout.

Robinson Cano, Russell Martin and Curtis Granderson hit the slams in a game where the Yankees avoided being swept at home by a lousy A’s team. “I know our offense is potent,” manager Joe Girardi said. “But that even surprised me.”

It was the most runs the Yankees had scored in a game since also putting up 22 in Boston on June 19, 2000. For the 2023 Yankees, this was the equivalent of about nine games worth of runs.

“Late in the game, we turned on the after-boosters,” said Nick Swisher.

Martin hit a solo homer in the fourth to cut the Yankees deficit to 7-2, and then in the fifth, Cano ended Oakland starter Rich Harden’s day with his slam that made it 7-6. “As soon as Robbie hit it, we had the mentality we were gonna win,” Swisher said. That became more of a reality in the sixth when Martin unleashed his slam to make it 10-7, and incredibly, the Yankees weren’t even halfway to their final total.

In the seventh they scored six times on just two hits as two Oakland pitchers issued seven walks, and finally in the eighth they scored six more with Granderson’s slam the big blow.

“This game has been played a long time and pretty much everything has already happened,” Martin said. “I’m waiting to see who’s gonna hit four, but three is pretty cool.”

To which Derek Jeter said, “I don't think we’ll see this again.” So far, we haven’t.

The Yankees now stare at a three-city, 10-game road trip during which they do not have a day off. It starts in Tampa with three against the Rays who are 78-51 and have won four in a row and just completed a West Coast trip where they won seven of nine.

The Rays have had all kinds of problems as their starting rotation has been decimated by injuries, and now star shortstop Wander Franco is not with the team while an investigation goes on to determine whether he had an inappropriate relationship with a minor. And yet the Rays continue to solider on and are right on the heels of the division-leading Orioles.

They rank fourth as a team in OPS (.782), fourth in runs per game (5.4), third in home runs (189), (.261) and fourth in on-base (.332). Yandy Diaz leads the AL with a .326 average, Isaac Paredes leads the team with 26 homers and 80 RBI, and Randy Arozarena has 20 homers and 73 RBI.

On the pitching side, they’ve lost Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs and Drew Rasmussen for the season, yet they still have studs like Tyler Glasnow, Zach Eflin and newly-acquired Aaron Civale to lean on in the rotation, plus effective relievers Pete Fairbanks, Jason Adam and Colin Poche, all of whom have ERA’s below 3.00.

The pitching matchups are as follows: Friday at 6:40 p.m. on YES it’s Gerrit Cole (3.03 ERA) against Eflin (3.58); Saturday at 4:10 on YES it’s Clarke Schmidt (4.68) against Glasnow (3.35); and Sunday at 1:40 on Amazon Prime it’s Rodon (6.27) against Zack Littell (4.27).