TAMPA — One final time with gusto: The game as George Steinbrenner knew it has been dead for a long time.
And those who think it is coming back are, at best, misguided.
Standing in the broiling sun at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Friday morning, Brian Cashman was asked if The Boss would have changed with the times or would be pestering the Yankees’ general manager to sign high-priced free agents Manny Machado and Bryce Harper.
“Those days are gone. The whole industry is different. That’s like four Basic Agreements ago, it seems like. We have revenue-sharing and stadium-funding since we moved into the new stadium that we’re paying a big bill on,’’ said Cashman, who has to be numb to the belief that The Boss would have been able to run the current Yankees like he did before rules were introduced to curb spending by large-market teams, which also includes the Red Sox and Dodgers. “Listen, you can burn the candle on both ends, but the system that we’re operating on today is completely different than the one that [Steinbrenner] had free reign on. And most of all, the preventive measures that have been put in were because of George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees. … The game now rewards — reward might not be the right word — but it rewards losing.’’
People who want Hal Steinbrenner to channel his dad don’t know that can’t happen in 2019 and should consider that before criticizing the son, who operates in a system that would be foreign to his father.
“I don’t pay attention to that stuff, to be honest,” Cashman said. “I know in this world of social media, there are a lot of haters and judgers and experts that come along the way, and that’s fine. And fans are short for fanatics. I get that, too. But our job is to make objective decisions based on real facts. And sometimes I’ve seen a lot of stuff out there about ‘Hey, the game is the healthiest it’s ever been.’ Everybody is talking about the revenue that is generating. But they don’t assume expenses are rising simultaneously as the revenues. You can’t get all fired up about that inaccurate information. … In fairness to people out there, they don’t have all of the information. I can’t judge them for that, because they’re operating on a lack of information and they’re also emotionally attached and involved. I think if they were in a better position to get all the data points, they’d understand everything.’’
Cashman recalled the often heated discussions he had when The Boss wanted not just All-Stars at all 10 positions, but Hall of Famers.
“I remember many a conversation with The Boss,” Cashman recalled. “He had trouble with that 25-man roster being limited to 25 and I always would have in our knockdown drag-outs, ‘You can’t have them all.’ ”
Miguel Andujar’s future, two impressive Troy Tulowitzki workouts in December and the ability to improve the bullpen played big roles in the Yankees stepping out of the Machado Sweepstakes, which ended with the Padres giving the free agent infielder $300 million across 10 seasons this week.
Talking about Machado, Cashman explained what led to the Yankees moving away from the third baseman/shortstop.
“The main belief is we have a third baseman in Andujar that we do like. [The] Tulowitzki release [from Toronto] and general workout [changed] our course a little bit. He really responded well to that workout. We had a lot of areas on this team we wanted to address. Two vacancies in the bullpen. Clearly, we had a vacancy at shortstop with Didi’s [Gregorius] injury and on top of that we have a young third baseman in Andujar that we believe in,’’ Cashman said. “Once the Tulo thing came into play, it kind of changed some of the equation for us.
It allowed us to secure a player we were excited about what he potentially could do for us. And we were able to pull down some arms [Adam Ottavino and Zack Britton] that we really like in the bullpen. We brought DJ LeMahieu in as well to diversify and give us flexibility at a lot of different positions.’’
There are fans who believe betting on the 34-year-old Tulowitzki staying healthy — he hasn’t played in a big league game since July 28, 2017, and missed all of last season due to surgery on each heel to remove bone spurs — is a big gamble and shouldn’t have influenced the decision to avoid Machado.
Cashman said he believes the heel surgery has provided Tulowitzki new life.
“We are banking on the problems being fixed,” Cashman said. “He was going down with a number of injuries we feel were a direct result with the spurs in both heels. Now we obviously feel we have a healthy player but we also have to recognize he hasn’t played in two years. We have to be careful how we deploy him and keep him fresh.’’
— Additional reporting by Ken Davidoff
