David Lennon: Yankees' Hal Steinbrenner keeps spending, but Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone need to deliver
From left, Yankees manager Aaron Boone, managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner and GM Brian Cashman. Credit: AP
Hal Steinbrenner chose to double down (again) on what has proven to be a losing bet the past nine seasons by retaining Aaron Boone as manager and awarding GM Brian Cashman a new contract extension, the latter being announced during Wednesday’s 54-minute Zoom conference with the media.
In Cashman’s case, the Yankees’ championship drought is now at 17 years during his tenure, matching the second-longest in franchise history. By our back-of-the-napkin accounting (and research by Cot’s Contracts), that’s roughly $4.2 billion invested by Steinbrenner for zero World Series titles, and yet the stewards in charge of spending his baseball fortune remain the same.
As Hal explained Wednesday, multiple times, he’s happy with the current arrangement, and it’s not hard to see why. You can easily argue that Boone just completely his best season as manager, getting the Yankees to 93 wins — mostly without Aaron Judge — and Cashman’s roster, on paper, was good enough to win a World Series (full disclosure: I picked them to do exactly that back in March).
But here’s where Steinbrenner’s logic runs aground. If Cashman keeps putting together these championship-caliber teams, and Boone is the right guy to lead them, then how do you rationalize, year after year, their failure to achieve that supposedly attainable goal?
It’s become a nearly indefensible position, which is why the Yankees no longer get the benefit of the doubt. Steinbrenner obviously trusts Cashman to get him to 90-plus wins and the October tournament every year, but that’s where Hal’s bucks stop — always short of a title. And no matter what the Yankees do to improve during the upcoming nuclear winter for baseball, the expectation is that they’ll find a way to implode during the playoffs anyway — until Boone & Co. finally deliver the big prize.
Boone, to his credit, acknowledged that Wednesday. Words are pointless for the Yankees at this stage because no one is all that interested in the process anymore. New York is supposed to be the home office for this result-oriented business, and Boone — who will be entering his 10th season, the final guaranteed year of his contract — is on borrowed time.
“I think we have a lot of the right people in the building,” Boone said. “But at the end of the day, we haven’t won a championship with me at the helm ... Ultimately we’re going to have to break through that narrative, which a lot of teams that win a championship do — squash something that’s plagued them over time. So until I do that, I haven’t proven myself at the highest level.”
Boone isn’t alone in that regard among the current Yankees. Aaron Judge, a three-time MVP, has now worn pinstripes for a decade without a ring. Gerrit Cole figured to help deliver numerous titles, according to Steinbrenner on his signing day in 2019, but now just has two years left to win one in the Bronx.
On Wednesday, neither Steinbrenner, Cashman nor Boone could sufficiently pinpoint the tragic flaws that consistently doom the Yankees come October. Everyone said each year is different. Then again, those three are the only common denominators during this extended playoff malaise, so it’s got to be something more than shoddy glovework, reckless baserunning or bats inexplicably disappearing every postseason.
Steinbrenner made an effort to repeatedly steer blame away from Cashman and Boone by going after the players, collectively, for failing to perform. He’s not wrong. By doing so, however, all that did was boomerang the fault right back at his management team. After all, Cashman is the guy that picks those players. And it’s Boone’s responsibility to get the best out of them, which definitely didn’t happen in the humiliating three-game sweep by the Rays in the division series.
“The majority of the responsibility — In my mind, my opinion — lies with the position players and the inability to score on a consistent basis, throughout the course of the entire season, for the most part,” Steinbrenner said. “Not on the shoulders of Aaron Boone does the blame lie.”
Boone was never going to be the scapegoat for this season. Neither was Cashman. Both have longstanding solid relationships with Steinbrenner, who is nothing like his tempestuous dad when it comes to evaluating the baseball staff. And we’d venture to guess that Hal preferred to head into this lockout-afflicted winter wrapped in the comfort of familiarity, even if that meant wearing the scorn of his angry fan base.
That said, to believe that Steinbrenner is satisfied filling seats and selling hot dogs rather than trying to win No. 28 is a misguided assumption. Despite their October face-plants, the Yankees are annually among MLB’s top three payrolls, and since 2003 — the inception of the luxury tax — they have paid the second-most in penalties ($514 million) to the Dodgers ($519 million). Still, Cashman has only the 2009 title to show for all those riches spent.
All these years later, the Yankees continue to learn a hard lesson, schooled again by this month’s small-market World Series between the Brewers and Rays: it’s not always about the money. Steinbrenner keeps supplying the cash, but something else is intrinsically wrong with the Yankees, and the owner is gambling again that it’s not the people he’s had in charge.
“I have never suggested a season like this season is a success,” Steinbrenner said. “I am often asked, was the entire season a failure? Winning 93 games is not a failure. Playing in the division series is not a failure. It became a failure because we did not do well.”
And yet, so far, no one has paid a price for the Yankees once again coming up short. The only expectations fulfilled were the anticipated returns of Boone and Cashman, which history has shown isn’t enough to reverse the franchise’s downward trend. Steinbrenner’s faith alone isn’t going to change that.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
