Allard: Cashman Yawns As Yanks Limp

Via Phil Allard:

Cashman’s passivity is costing the Yankee wins. How many? It’s impossible to say with complete certaintly. But the Yanks are scoring 4.6 runs a game this year, as opposed to 5.9 last year. Perhaps Cashman is waiting until closer to the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, but by then, the Yanks could be too far behind for an extra bat to do much good.

For now, Cashman sits and watches, biding his team until the injuries heal, doing very little to help the team win.

And there is the pitching predicament. Cashman’s answers so far to bolster the rotation and provide an improvement over Darrel Rasner and Sidney Ponson are to work out Victor Zambrano and, god forbid, Eric “Moonshot” Milton.

Cashman took a chance this year, hoping that Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes were ready to start the season in the rotation. They weren’t. In fact, they failed terribly. This is not to criticize Cashman for not getting Johan Santana. I was in favor of not making that trade then and I am still happy the Yanks didn’t sign Santana to a long-term contract.

The problem here is that Cashman had no contingency plan, nothing to back up two rookies who were rushed into the rotation, and no solutions to an anemic-and often clueless–offense.

Hey, Phil, as much as I want to, in my best Edward G. Robinson impersonation, say “Where’s your messiah now, Moses?“…instead, I’ll just say “Welcome to the dark side buddy!”

Good job, Mr. Allard, in summing up where we are and how we got here.

July 14, 2008 | Filed Under Trap Door Items

Comments

3 Responses to “Allard: Cashman Yawns As Yanks Limp”

MJ on July 14th, 2008 3:53 pm

The problem here is that Cashman had no contingency plan, nothing to back up two rookies who were rushed into the rotation, and no solutions to an anemic-and often clueless–offense.
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Given that Carlos Silva signed a monstrosity of a contract, I don’t know what Cashman could’ve done in free agency. Apart from Kyle Lohse, I have no idea who the Yanks could’ve had as a contingency plan. After all, that person (or persons) would’ve had to agree to a minor league assignment. Why would someone agree to be in AAA for the Yanks when they can be in the big leagues for another team?

As far as the offense is concerned, Allard’s criticism is preposterous. What sort of contingency would one have in mind for an offense that had scored nearly 2000 runs over the past two seasons? Did anyone figure that Jeter seemed cooked as a regular baseball player in 2008? Did anyone figure that Robinson Cano would have a disastrous first half?

The team has issues, only some of which could have been prevented or planned for. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be here. But, again, until you can show me all the moves that Cashman left on the table, we’re back at square one with hollow criticisms and no proposed solutions.
DJ21996 on July 14th, 2008 4:31 pm

The problem is that every player he relied on, failed miserably.

Hughes, Kennedy, Hawkins, Ensberg. He has made a lot of bad signings over the years and it has caught up to him right now.

The next 2 months could dictate his legacy.
Raf on July 14th, 2008 5:11 pm

I would like Cashman to explain why Hawkins, Traber & Moeller are on the roster.

As for the “contingency” plan, they had arms to go in place of Hughes & IPK; who does he think has been picking up their starts? Chamberlain was moved into the rotation, Rasner was called up. Ponson is here because Wang got injured.

Don’t think anyone saw the offense performing as bad as they have this year. That’s where the problem is; the pitching has done much better than expected, IMO.