Brian Cashman is looking at Yankees’ disastrous issues all wrong

SAN ANTONIO — Brian Cashman kept defaulting to the big picture. Yes, there were problems in fundamental areas on defense and especially baserunning, but that in the GM’s view did not prevent the Yankees from being a terrific team that reached the World Series.

But it sure did a lot to keep them from winning the championship. The Yankees coughed up Games 1 and 5 to the Dodgers with unsound play, which Cashman acknowledged on Tuesday at the GM meetings by saying, “Our game didn’t show up when it counted the most.”

Except there are times your game doesn’t show up because baseball is fickle, and in a short burst, the best teams can look terrible and vice versa. But what the Yankees suffered in blowing Games 1 and 5 to the Dodgers was not mercurial. It was predictable. They never cleaned up the finer points of the game. If anything, they worsened as the season progressed. This was not an October problem or a World Series problem. You could see this mounting from April onward.

“I said we had a struggle with our baserunning this year,” Cashman said. “We were a bad defensive team, without a doubt at times this year, but we also, when you take it all, add it all together, we were a really good baseball team that earned the right to win the American League and get all the way to the World Series, and we’re really super proud about it.”

He’s the architect of this and, thus, I understand his pride — and defensiveness. Cashman was feisty at these same meetings last year after a playoff-less 82-80 season he himself termed a “disaster.” Cashman defended his lieutenants and the organization’s processes, insisting the Yankees were an elite operation and that would be proven out. And he used the word “vindicated” a year later.

But harping on the fundamental shortcomings made Cashman feisty again. Nevertheless, they were worth harping on. First, because the Yankees are good enough to win it all and state annually they are championship or bust. Thus, the standard they should be held to is the highest and not, say, the middling improvement we might see next year from the White Sox. Second, while of course Cashman is right that all players have strengths and weaknesses and no roster is without defect, for $300 million-plus the Yankees should not have had such a glaring lack of fundamentals. The Dodgers play in the same stratosphere and go talent for talent with the Yankees, but they also played a cleaner brand of the game.

Joe Kelly, a Dodger reliever who was inactive in the postseason, clobbered the Yankees on a podcast as the eighth- or ninth-best team in the playoffs due to their fundamental shortcomings. Cashman dismissed it, saying the criticism felt “personal.” Cashman said he reached out to Dodger officials who did not corroborate that viewpoint. But I will guarantee that the Dodgers’ pre-World Series scouting assessment was that the Yankees were talent over fundamentals and that putting pressure on the Yankees would lead to blunders.

Which brings us to the third reason I am harping on this — what happened ALL YEAR plus in the World Series cannot be retroactively changed. But it can be learned from. Cashman made it pretty clear that he is an admirer and supporter of Aaron Boone and clearly wants him back to honor at least his 2025 option if not more, pending ownership approval (and ownership has never deviated from how much it likes Boone).

Historically, there is a tolerance for physical miscues like Aaron Judge dropping a fly ball — no matter how routine. But mental errors are something else. And mental errors reflect upon a manager and his coaching staff. And this was a Yankee season of the absent-minded and lack of detail and near indifference to the routine too often.

Cashman said the Yankees will “target every area of weakness” to try to improve next year. This can’t just be lip service about playing the game better and tighter. Yes, Job 1 is trying to keep Juan Soto, and the bullpen has to be refashioned and the corner infield fixed. But, again, the Yankees should be thinking of having it all.

And Cashman was again defensive on all of this as questions mounted on the fundamental issues. He pointed to the World Series appearance. He noted that many of those asking questions had picked the Yankees to win the title (I didn’t, if that matters), as if those inquiring being wrong somehow disqualified them from delving into Yankee shortcomings. He dismissed the Yankees being 7-0 in playoff series vs. the AL Central since 2017 and 1-7 vs. everyone else as “silly” rather than illustrative of the type of teams the Yanks can and can’t beat in October. He said the Yankees “baserunning program” was “considered one of the best in the business” despite the results in the majors being awful and backed it by saying the organization’s baserunning head Matt Talarico is being interviewed by three other teams.

Again, I get the defensiveness. Cashman is very successful at his job. His employees admire him for how much he protects them.

But this has to be a deep-breath moment for him and the organization. Not to de-emphasize elements that are more helpful to winning, such as talent accumulation and hitting homers on offense and missing bats from the mound. Instead, the problem existed all year. It did not get enough attention and certainly not enough correction and it was another kind of “disaster” in the end.

The Yankees don’t have to decide on Soto or sound play. They should be doing everything possible to ensure both moving forward.