Yanks Down to Second Choices?
Now, I believe these situations, as often as not, work out for the best, but I don't want them to lead the Yankees back into the reactive spending we saw from them last season. Not that we couldn't use some help, but we can't afford the picks that go with orgiatic acquisitions.
Meanwhile, lots of jobs remain open for the Yanks, including MLB and AAA hitting coach was well as head of player development.
Hitting coaches maybe somewhat fungible, but a head of player development can make a huge difference. I'm really hoping they go for a younger guy. I'm not trying to be ageist, but a younger guy might prove more stat savvy than a retread like Minaya. Now, I know they now have a whole Analytics Department to help them with a more mathematical understanding of things, but I'd want them to hire someone who contains both the number savvy and the teaching savvy in one person.
We'll see what they come up with. As far as I know, no one has turned them down for that one, yet.
posted by Kalel9 @ 3:00 PM
23 Comments:
I think my surmise is probably current. When you have the GM bleating about win-now, no perfect beast, no deadline deals for prospects, blah blah blah, it pretty much sends a signal that development is not a priority, so you're being set up to fail.
I mean, a team can only be the best team they can be (a perfect beast) if they rely on development, trades, and free agency. So Cashman is telling anyone who is willing to listen that high-end mediocrity is their only goal.
Layden's Knicks without a cap.
Hillman could see that and smartly said no. Too bad Cashman didn't do the same.
Hillman wanted to get back on the field and in the big leagues. I think he was really hanging out hoping to replace GIrardi.
I might make another post about how the Yanks are divvying up their operation into 4 parts.
sign Lester and Miller.. neither one cost a pick, and would give the Yankees dominant pitching both in the rotation and pen.
Sadly, there was no way that was going to happen. And of course, Cashman hired Girardi over Hillman, and that speaks volumes about his incompetence.
But my point remains. Why would anyone with good options want to take a development job with a team that explicitly refuses to prioritize development, according to the GM's own words.
FWIW, CC wants them to sign Lester. He thinks is close to the best start in MLB.
Don't need Miller with Lindgren in the wings.
We definitely shouldn't be spending on relievers with Lindgren, Rumbelow and the rest on the way. We'll have a very strong pen going forward.
Lawyer, I think you're overlooking some of the good that is going on. Especially with the farm. VP of Player Development for the New York Yankees is a great job that will reap immediate benefits and if done well will catapult an executive to the top.
Kalel9
If all that happens, it will be the first time it has happened since before Cashman became GM.
The farm was in great shape in 2006-08, but it yielded almost no dividends because the GM can't execute or self-scout (and since he admits that he isn't a talent evaluator, that shouldn't be all that surprising).
Until proven otherwise, with recent history as a guide, it seems likely that will see a repeat of that shortfall.
They won't give prospects an extended opportunity unless they have no other choice, including a terrible veteran (e.g., Roberts, Capuano).
And they will probably use most of them for trades.
I would love, love, love to think othherwise, but not with this GM and ownership and team president, Harpo Marx.
That's not why the farm didn't reap benefits. The didn't reap benefits because after pumping money into it as Cashman's request in his 2005 renegotiation, they pulled money out of it starting when Hank took over.
Thus they didn't make as many overslot deals as they were in the draft or huge deals in IFA after Sanchez and until this year.
Also there was corruption in the DR for a few years in the early part of the century, that also ended up hurting the farm.
Harpo Marx was a massive talent.
I'm talking about normal development and drafting the way most teams that don't have deep pockets have to do it. Cashman has been as bad as any GM in either league at that.
If there was any accountability at all he would've been fired a long time ago
Would it be nice to sign Cubans, have extra money to exploit their financial advantage, of course. But that's not the biggest problem with the team.
What exactly do you think the major league GM has to do with minor league development?
He asked for more money for the minors and George gave it to him, and the minors took off. Then Hal took it away, and the minors stalled out for a few years, though they have now bounce back.
Cashman has been the one who insisted on bringing back the old scouts and hiring away the best scouts from other teams, like Mike Leuzinger and others.
He got rid of Lin Garrett, and put Damon Oppenheimer in charge of the drafts and as a result the drafts have been as good as they should be given the budgets and where the Yankees tend to pick.
Where I think he has been most culpable was in not keeping the 3 #1's last year and instead throwing money around on old free agents.
He should have talked the owners into letting it slide for a year or two and really rebuilding. He's culpable for that, but not for minor league player development.
Back when Ed Barrow was the GM and, along with Joe McCarthy, really set up the Yanks as the Bronx Bombers, he hired George Weis to run the farm for him because the major league GM doesn't have time to.
The bottom line is this: Ownership will never go for a full rebuild, because they want to sell tickets and are under the impression that fans just will not tolerate a couple of lean years. What they fail to realize is, despite all their window dressing, they're essentially condemning the team to sports hell: Not good enough to win it all, not bad enough to get high-end picks.
So despite the "World Series or bust" mantra, they'll do little more than, as LINJ likes to call it, pretend to contend, until the bottom eventually falls out.
The GM is the COO of the entire baseball organization.
If the minor league system was booming out prospects and providing a pipeline for the ML team Cashman would be claiming credit, as he prematurely did with Hughes, Joba, and IPK.
In order to think that Cashman is doing a good job at anything, a long list of people have to be blamed.
It was Torre's fault, Nardi's fault, Girardi's fault, Hal's fault, Randy's fault, Long's fault, Eiland's fault, Newman's fault, the minor league manager's fault, the scout's fault.
No... It's on him.
We have a bad GM who has lived off of Stick and Buck's great work, and a humongous payroll advantage, yet still can't do anything but whine, blame fans, and mock an octogenarian Yankee great.
He keeps talking the money, and unselfish-consciously (but revealingly) shifted his blather from we have to reinvent ourselves with youth to the no time to inject youth in NY nonsense.
Money for nothing, and bad baseball decisions for free.
I don't agree with that. Cashman's office is in New York. The minors are and have been run out of Tampa for a long time and the foreseeable future. Cashman looks at the minors and has tried to fix them by asking for more money and getting better scouts.
I don't think he micros the minor league coaching staffs, though someone should.
Remember, while Cash is the GM, the Yanks have and had a bunch of Vice Presidents. So their are executive tiers between Cash and the minors,
Anyway, making the case that Cash is a witless GM because the Yanks have had up and down minors, just doesn't hold water. They've had good and bad minors under Cash, and they are getting good again. They have never had a top 10 pick throughout a draft under Cash. They didn't use their financial might to the extent they could have or Hank said they would to fix things.
If you want to say he's a bad GM, talk about the bad trades he lost, about the slack he cuts managers and about the idiocy that screwed up Joba. Talk about his not being able to keep the owners in check.
Up and down? Unless we are counting Greene or Nova, and it's premature on both, they have 't developed a top of the rotation starter since Pettitte or a position player since Gardner.
That's laughably bad.
But sure, he only makes a decent trade when he takes salary back.
His free agent signings and extensions are mostly bad after some good signings years ago. That's understandable, because the CBA altered the landscape. That he continues on that path makes it more inexcusable.
He's apparently down with the owners because he keeps taking their money. As a result, I agree with NoMaas that there are no more Cashman would done this but (fill in the blank) excuses.
He knows the deal and re-ups, so it's all on him as well.
His funniest attempt to have it both ways when he rightly opposed signing Raphael Soriano, but then cited making the playoffs that year to defend his record, but with Mo down, there was no way they would have made the playoffs without Soriano.
As I have said, and I think you can recall, I used to defend him, but he jumped the shark years ago.
The final straw was his pitching holds the keys to the kingdom silliness at a time when anyone with a working brain knew that offense was about to crater given the McCarthy-esqe drug hysteria.
Whatever, we are stuck with Brian Layden.
Did you see this? A much better topic about a truly smart guy that NY is lucky to have:
http://espn.go.com/nba/preview2014/story/_/id/11654375/nba-phil-jackson-point-view-new-york-knicks
When you are secure you can be candid.
My internet has been in and out all day, so I lost the reply to the above.
Anyway, the gist of it was that there are plenty of reasons to not like Cash but the farm isn't at the top of the list.
Also Wang was a good pitcher from the farm and his injury was not Cash's fault.
His subsequent botched rehab was on Cashman, though I think Wang was cooked regardless, which is a shame. I also blame him for Joba's back-and-forth, but he was also done as a top-tier starter prospect the second he lost his velocity after that freak injury in Texas.
Definitely blame him for Joba.
Unfortunately we never got to know what Wang really was going to be. And after he rehabed the foot injury, they rushed him back to the majors even though he clearly wasn't ready. That may have contributed to his arm problems.
The way they handled Pineda after the trade was even worse. They had him continue to compete for a spot in the rotation even after he had shoulder problems in the context of greatly diminished velocity.
To be honest, this has been a clown show. Who needs CBA induced parity when you have Cashman?
Hire Joe Maddon NOW!
I'd be in favor.
Wow, Eric Hinske turned us down for hitting coach. Had no idea he was even a candidate.
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