Brian Cashman's Grade A Offseason

My dad and I were talking last night and had a conversation about exactly this; Cashman’s moves, or lack thereof. I said pretty much that I think he has had the best past year, year-and-a-half that he’s had in his entire career. Not only have the under the radar moves worked out, but he didn’t trade away the farm in any other dealings. He’s like a fine wine; he’s getting better with age.

Having Grienke would still be nice imo. But off course we can’t be too certain of the cost it would take to require him.

Grienke’s anxiety issues make him a poor candidate for NY. I think he can do ok in a small market but is not the type to thrive as No. 1 under a big contract (see: Zito) or in the back end on the Yankee rotation (see: almost anyone signed since 2002).

And I can’t say enough how much I am thankful for him not trading any of our young, soon to be great, pro-spects.

doesn’t he deserve some credit for helping these guys maintain what they are?

I’m not sure I can credit Cashman with keeping the prospects at least aside from the “untouchable” Betences and Banuelos. He’s tried to trade Montero too many times the asshat.

That being said, I can’t give him a perfect score because of the ill-advised Feliciano signing, I will never understand the logic behind that.

I give him a lot of credit for the Colon/Garcia signing, as that has worked out pretty well. I agree with Rorschach, in that I think Larry has done a good job with the pitching staff, so I give him credit for that as well. Wade has been pretty good, and Ayala has been acceptable. However, what lowers the grade is his handling of Montero. As we’ve seen, his bat is pretty decent, while for a long stretch of time, Martin’s bat wasn’t. I still think that if the Yankees were any other team, Montero would have been the starting catcher and Martin would not have been signed to begin with. Plus, he’s come close to trading him last year and this year, and if not but for the grace of other stupid GM’s, he’d probably be gone. And while he’s done a good job stabilizing the bullpen, he’s also resigned Proctor & Mitre, as well as signed a DFA’d Laffey from the Mariners, THE. SEATTLE. MARINERS. because he pitches with his left hand. I’ll give him a pass for Laffey, cause at least we didn’t really know he would suck, but Proctor & Mitre I find unacceptable. Resigning them is the equivalent of going to a store, buying a product, finding out later that product is defective, returning it to the store, then later on go back to that store and saying “Hey, you know that defective product I returned? The exact same one? I’m willing to give that another chance!” It’s probably worse in Proctor’s case since we’re the ones who broke it in the first place. I would’ve liked him to keep Aceves too, but I don’t think that was entirely his fault.

Having said all that, I still think he’s a pretty decent GM and much better than a lot of the morons out there. I don’t think we’d be where we are right now without a lot of his moves.

But at least his stupid moves have been with secondary needs and secondary players, except for Montero. I have been OK with trading him for a Lee or a Halladay. I was wrong. The man is a stud and will help deliver WS wins if he can stay healthy.

Overall? I think Cash is a top 5 GM and I am glad the Yanks have him.