Maybe it's true. Maybe it isn't. Who cares? What's done is done, and Sorry Sonny did himself no favors by waiting 11 months to point a finger and bleat like the goat he will forever be.
It's not every day that you find yourself siding with Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman in a dispute, but blaming the coaches for your lousy pitching might work in Little League, or in Cincinnati, but it sure looks shabby at the MLB level.
So yesterday, there was Cooperstown, snidely sidestepping Sorry Sonny's sportswriter spittle, and pretending to take the high road by wishing his critic peace and prosperity in the future. The headline of George King's article in the Rupert Murdoch Review (now with Jerry Hall!) goes, "Brian Cashman is done talking about Sonny Gray." Frankly, we should all join him.
But there are other reasons why Cash should prefer silence over discussion of Sonny Gray, and they surround his greatest career occupational blind spot: his relentless - and fruitless - quests to acquire so-called "power arms."
If you want to understand why, in this millennium, Boston has four championships, and the Yankees two - look no further than the success rates of the two team's "aces." Boston acquired Josh Beckett, Chris Sale, John Lackey and Ketchup Curt Schilling, the Senator from Rhode Island. The Yankees, under Cashman, brought in Michael Pinada, Carl Pavano, Cory Lidle, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson Kei Igawa and Sorry Sonny Gray, the new pride of Cincinnati.
Or think of it this way: Boston acquired the good Nathan Eovaldi; we had the bad one.
All of this is why I'm posting from home, rather than curbside of the Canyon of Heroes, while we await James Paxton to lead the victory parade. Nothing against Paxy: Maybe Big Maple will, at long last, be the power-arm that Cashman has been seeking, like an orphaned bear cub chasing whatever looks like an furry nipple. But, jeez, I just dunno. They are the reigning Miss Universe. We're the first-runner-up, a slight notch above Miss Congeniality (which appears to be Hal Steinbrenner's main goal, when it comes to pleasing his fellow owners.)
So Cash is right to shut up about Sorry Sonny. Less said, the better. Only question is whether a year from now, we'll be reading the same article about some new power arm that fizzled, as the Curse of Cashman enters a new decade. Good luck to Sonny. He no longer has to throw sliders. I assume he'll win 20.
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12 comments:
I can't even comment any more. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a shitty team. You can all call me out when these idiots go on their inevitable string of victories at some point in April or May, but let's see what happens over the whole season. And meanwhile, back in the alternate reality zone, these are the current top three headlines in the "latest news" section over at the Yankee Propaganda Times:
Severino: 'It's going to be tough for a little bit'
CC likely to start season on injured list
Boone confident in rotation depth
Booney - the gift that keeps on giving. I would MUCH rather take some anxious, bag-of-nerves, grizzled old baseball fart who said "Frankly, I'm concerned. We need to do something fast. Our rotation is in trouble." BE HONEST, YOU ASSHOLE. Or do you just not care? Are you so mellow that the sunflower seeds just slide out of your hand in the dugout? "Confident?" Fuck this fake bravado. It doesn't work, asshole. It doesn't work.
What Ma Boone is confident in is that he is making $1.15 million dollars this year. Just as he did last year, just as he will next year.
If the price for ding that was to stand up for my boss and say, "i feel confident," I'm afraid I probably would, too.
There's really no downside for Boonie here. If the pitching falls apart, nobody is going to blame him. This way, he looks plucky and optimistic to the idiots in the press box.
I love how frequently Cashman declares what he "is done talking about"—and how often the writers let him get away with it.
Note: it's always something he's screwed up badly, or someone calling him out.
It's as if Richard Nixon kept coming out to the podium and telling the press, "I'm done talking about this Watergate thing. Let's move on"—and they let him! How much flak, for instance, did Coops ever get about his sorry, tawdry affair, compared to, say, the sexual shenanigans of Isaiah Thomas?
I think I will start trying this with my wife: "Hey, I ma DONE talking about how I staggered in drunk at two this morning and fell asleep face down on the couch. I prefer to talk about moving forward, and what you're making me for dinner."
Wish me luck!
I'm done talking about Cashman. He sucks, his pitching trades have been terrible, his slagheap signings are embarrassing, his Lasik makes him look weird, he lost too much weight, he keeps the most clueless one-two punch in MLB with Boone and Rothschild, his nose is too big, and he's gone from Boy Wonder to Adult Asshole.
Aside from that, I'm done talking about him.
P.S. Our rotation sucks.
Rotation? What rotation? We have a rotation?
Just like "Spahn, Sain, and a day of rain," soon it will be, "Happ, Happ, you poor dumb sap."
Not to be an Cashman apologist, but are you intentionally ignoring that he also brought in "aces" CC and Moose and Tanaka?
All were free agent acquisitions. He still has yet to trade for an impact pitcher (Shawn Chacon aside) who becomes an ace and leads us to the Canyon of Heroes. He also acquired via free agency Pavano, Jaret Wright, et al.
Thankfully he pulled off the trades for Gleyber, Frazier, Justus, Didi, Hicks, Swishaliciois, and so on.
His track record is 50/50
"He still has yet to trade for an impact pitcher (Shawn Chacon aside) who becomes an ace and leads us to the Canyon of Heroes."
David Cone
Roger Clemens
That said, what has he done for us lately.
Doug K.
Look, the post didn't say "TRADE FOR PITCHER", it said "acquired". Boston didn't trade for Lackey, he was a free agent signing, so this isn't all about trades. CC, Tanaka, and Moose count.
Also,Doug K., Gene Michael, not Cashman, traded for Cone.
It must be admitted that Cashman has made some good trades. His best run was indeed that little spurt of dealing relievers and others down the stretch to contenders, for good young players. This is just basic GM competence but hey, we must give him his props.
That said, Cashman operated for years with an unparalleled advantage. He could spend virtually anything at a time when all other GMs were working with a budget. Nonetheless, he could not build a champion of his own—a champion on which the backbone was not Stick's "Core of Four" in what is now 22 years of trying.
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