Soon, the question echoing across the Yankiverse will be a simple one: Will management be held accountable for the debacle of 2021?

Back in March, (what was it, a billion years ago?), when the Yankees pretended to be the swinging dicks of the AL East, a few isolated voices questioned the righty-imbalanced lineup and aging bullpen. Nobody wanted to hear it. 

Back in July, when the floundering Yankees desperately sought lefty bats and a fortified bullpen, a few voices questioned the wisdom of draining the farm system for salary dumps and short-term rentals. Nobody wanted to hear it. 

When you own the primary media outlet in charge of measuring your success, there can be no such thing as accountability. And that, my friends, is the sad story of the hubris-choked New York Yankees.

Aside from a 13-game stretch in August, an outlier on the season, 2021 has brought us the most frustrating Yankee team in modern history. 

It will be remembered for its injuries, its strikeouts, its rally-killing double plays, its failed experiments, its disastrous trades, its catastrophic meltdowns in the final innings and its underperforming stars.

This team will be remembered in the way that we now recall the 14-year barf of the late 1980s and early 1990s - the Danny Tartabulls and Mel Halls, who live in our memories the way Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar will haunt future Yankee trivia contests.

We have watched Tampa - at a fraction of the Yankee payroll - dominate us on a regular basis. We have watched Boston rise, fall and rebuild - to win multiple championships. We are now watching Toronto crush us in a dress-rehearsal for October. Next year, it will be Baltimore. Every other franchise builds with youth. The Yankees seek to buy success. The famous "Core Four" used to be homegrown Yankees. Now, if such a thing existed, it would consist of imports. 

Soon, the question once again will be upon us: Will the front office skate? Will the Yankees scapegoat their puppet manager and a few targeted players, while the architect of this calamity - Brian Cashman - remains in charge?

I pose this with a grudging respect for Cashman. He has built some decent teams, albeit also-rans. But the Yankees are suffering through the worst world series drought in their history, while spending $200 million a year, a figure their owner thinks is enough. But it's not. 

Cashman cannot face a true reckoning from sportswriters whose jobs depend on getting their phone calls returned, or from the YES Network, which is owned by the Yankees. Nor will Hal Steinbrenner ever fire him. 

But when this season ends - in the way we all know it will - Cashman must do the right thing. 

He must resign.