Worse Than Stalin???

 

On this Memorial Day, I think it's pertinent to ask if our general manager, Brian Cashman, is actually worse than that longtime enemy of the United States, Josef Stalin.

Hear me out!

Back during the long-ago days of the Soviet Union's second, five-year plan—or was it their fifth, two-year plan? I forget—Stalin's propagandists came up with a model mine worker named Alexey Grigoryvich Stakhanov. 

You all know the Tennessee Tuxedo Ford song? "Mine 16 tons, and whattaya get..."

Fuhgeddaboutit!  On August 31, 1935, Stakhanov supposedly mined 102 tons of coal in one shift. Less than a month later, on September 19th—these are the kind of sporting stats they kept in the USSR—ol' Stakie mined 227 tons.

What he got was a bunch of medals, and a chance to live the Soviet equivalent of la vida loca at the Moscow Industrial Academy ("Show 'em what's behind Door No. 2, Carol Merrill!"). 

What the rest of the Soviet workforce got was the "encouragement' to emulate Stakhanov's incredible work effort through the "Stakhanovite" movement.

(It still seems incredible to me that a loose shelf of coal didn't tragically fall on Stakie's head at some point, but there you are.)

Basically, the idea behind the Stakhanovite movement was that the best you ever did—or the best that some bureaucrat ever made up—was the new norm. You were always supposed to equal it or top it.

Which is basically the same mentality that Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman goes by. Only worse.

"Worse" because even the "bests" that Cashman expects the recipients of his biggest contracts to live up to...ain't even that great.

The perpetually injured Aaron Hicks had a decent enough year in 2018, hitting .248 with 27 homers and 90 walks, and playing a very good centerfield. But it wasn't exactly Mickey Mantle in 1956. Hell, it wasn't even close to Curtis Granderson in 2011.

Joey Gallo, whose every appearance on the playing field sends a shudder through our bodies today...was a lifetime, .211 hitter in 7 seasons BEFORE he came to your New York Yankees. 

Sure, he could hit for some power, draw some walks, and had played a Gold Glove outfield. But .211?? What could possibly have made any reasonable observer think this guy was the answer to anything? Plus he had a history of injuries.

Even Giancarlo Stanton, who DID have a Stakhanovite kind of season with lowly Miami in 2017—lotta big pressure games that year—had had exactly one season in which he did not spend considerable time on the DL.

Didn't matter to Coops Cashman. 

Your best season would now be your average season with the New York Yankees.  Perpetual greatness awaited—even if you never had a really great year.

It's as if ol' Alexey Stakhanov had spent most of his shifts accidentally drilling a hole in his work boot. 

Not even Stalin was self-delusional enough to have convinced himself that that sort of performance should become the standard.

Okay, okay, I hear ya:  So Cooperstown Cashman DIDN'T brutally murder 30 million people or more, and subject the Bronx to abject terror for 30 years.  

So all he's done is...some rather admirable charitable work.

Okay, so he's NOT worse than Stalin.

But right now, his five-year plan is looking just about as successful.