What on earth are the New York Yankees doing?
It’s been less than two days since they got swept in the ALCS, and already, the report is that they’re not going to make the two biggest changes they probably need to make in order to turn the franchise around: firing Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman. On Tuesday, Andy Martino of SNY, the sports network of the Yankees, Mets, and other New York sports teams, reported that Cashman is likely going to be back in 2023 on a brand-new contract, and if that’s the case, Boone likely will be, too.
Why though?
Now is the perfect time to clean the House that Ruth Built. Cashman’s current contract (say that five times fast) is up. His father, a friend of George Steinbrenner, got him an internship with the organization in 1986. By February 1998, the younger Cashman was GM and that season, the Yankees won 114 games and the World Series that year.
Cashman inherited quite a promising setup when he took the job; the Yankees had won the World Series in 1996 and then won again in 1999 and 2000. But since the glory days of Jeter and Mariano dried up in the early 2010s, he’s come under intense scrutiny for failing to uphold the standard to which Yankees fans are accustomed.
The once-formidable Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009. Scratch that, they haven’t even been to the World Series since 2009. Since then, they’ve won the division four times and clinched six Wild Card berths, but haven’t been able to make it out of the pennant round.
As for Boone, he’s famous for one big home run in 2003 and got hired with absolutely zero coaching or managerial experience. But he’s a third-generation MLB player and that home run tormented the Boston Red Sox, so the Yanks seemingly overlooked his utter lack of actual know-how. He probably should’ve gotten axed after the Yankees lost the Wild Card in Boston in 2021. Instead, they extended him, an absolutely baffling and hilarious decision. For Sox fans, anyway.
Obviously, Sox fans will have no problem with the Yankees continuing to make the same mistake over and over. If anything, it might make the Fenway Faithful feel better about their own current situation. Their own first juicy rumor of the offseason is decidedly more encouraging; assistant GM Eddie Romero is reportedly in the Dominican Republic right now to lock in Rafael Devers for the long term. And though the Yankees have a whopping 30 consecutive winning seasons, the Sox have been vastly more successful than the Yankees since the start of the millennium, despite hiring and firing several GMs and presidents of baseball operations.
Any baseball fan growing up in the 90s or earlier knows that the elder Steinbrenner never would have tolerated this repeated postseason failure. His son Hal seems fine with 11 fruitless postseason appearances in the last 13 years.
Here’s to another 13.
Conflicting reports emerge on Rafael Devers extension talks
Conflicting reports have emerged about the Red Sox sending an executive to the Dominican Republic to hammer out a contract extension for Rafael Devers.