Forget, for a moment, the outstanding players who came knocking on the Yankees' door over the years, all the Bryce Harpers and Manny Machados willing to take less money to play in the Bronx, only to have Brian Cashman hide under his desk.
Forget all the free agent greats they never seriously considered, all the J.T. Realmutos and Max Scherzers and Freddie Freemans, and the 45 available shortstops passed up because Anthony Volpe was going to be the next Jeter.
Forget all the terrible choices made over the many years, all the Sonny Grays over Justin Verlanders, the Giancarlo Stantons over J.D. Martinezes, all the way back to Garry Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero.
Forget all that, if you can.
Let's look at all the quotidian mistakes, the smaller, offhanded, casual blunders that demonstrate every day, just how terrible Brian Cashman is as a general manager, and how terrible the management culture around him is.
I doubt if disposing of each of the four players below took up so much as a minute of his attention span.
And yet, if they alone had been on the New York Yankees this year—never mind any of the stars we scorned—this team would undoubtedly have won the AL East Division, and be in position now to win the World Series.
Of course, Ezequiel already won a ring with the Rangers, back in 2023, when he hit .276 with 14 homers for Texas.
Where does he play? Everywhere. Hence his great nickname, "The Situation."
Duran is basically a middle infielder, but he has played every single infield and outfield position during his time in Texas. He even pitched in 4 games in 2025, for a total of 3 1/3 innings...allowing 1 hit and 0 runs.
A hustling young guy who can play everywhere and do everything? Who would the Yanks possibly trade him for?
Why Joey Gallo, of course! Duran was part of the package—a package!—sent out to bring us back one of the very worst (and certainly the whiniest) players in Yankees history.
But hey, Ezequiel just didn't measure up as the kind of analytic, "Three True Outcomes" kind of guy.
T. J. Rumfield—Yeah, you might remember me writing about this guy a time or two. After wasting two years of what should have been his major-league career, Brian Cashman peddled him to Colorado in the off-season for one Angel Chivilli—a pitcher with a lifetime record then of 3-8, 6.18, though a veritable star compared to Joey Gallo.
(In fairness, Chivilli did go a much-improved, 1-1, 3.78 for us in 2026...and spent most of the year on the DL.)
Rumfield, by contrast, led the NL in OBP, at .390. He also hit .300, with 30 doubles and 16 homers, and an .843 OPS. Nor were these merely Rocky Mountain highs. On the road, Rummy hit .295 with less power, but got on base even more often (.395).
An excellent fielder at first base, Rumfield, you'll recall, might have helped us pull out the Fifth Inning Fiasco in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, had he been at first instead of a crippled Anthony Rizzo. But again, not Brian Cashman's kind of ballplayer.
With Rumfield on the team this year, we at least might have been able to escape watching Luis Garcia, Jr., go 1-10 with 3 strikeouts against Tampa Bay. But don't worry: we'll get a chance to see that particular performance again and again in the years ahead.
Not so amazin'...until you compare it to the .186 our catcher of the future, Austin Wells, hit.
What's more, while our Mr. Wells threw out slightly less than the league-average percentage of base thieves, Torrens gunned down 38.6 of them, as opposed to an NL average of 23.3.
In 2025, he did even better, leading the Senior Circuit by nailing 40.8 percent of all attempting to steal (The league only caught 23.3 percent.).
Yet another game, all-around player, Torrens also can play first and the outfield, and even put in 2 games at second for Seattle a few years ago.
What the Yanks got for Torrens was...nothing. They drafted him in 2012, lost him in the Rule 5 draft to Seattle in 2016, signed him as a free agent in January, 2024...then sold him to the Mets before he ever played a game in the Bronx.
Because, you know, Hal Steinbrenner can never have too much money.
Oswaldo Cabrera—In what was perhaps the most inexplicably stupid move in Cashman's career, the Yanks watched Ryan McMahon and Anthony Volpe deteriorate miserably throughout 2026—and Jazz Chisholm hit the DL—and...DFA'd the one man they had who might have capably replaced all three.
This wasn't even a money deal, to refill the insatiable maw of the Steinbrenner coffers. They just let him go.
Cabrera, of course, had helped prevent the Yanks from blowing an enormous lead when he first came up in 2022, and was last seen in 2024, lying at the plate with a horribly busted leg, asking..."Was I safe?"
Yeah, no desire in that guy.
He had fought his way back at Scranton this summer, hitting .288 with 19 homers, stealing 12 bases in 13 attempts, and—yep—played every position on the field except pitcher, catcher, and centerfield.
We should have seen him up for all of September, seeing if he could replace—or at least push—all of the accumulated dead weight in the Yankees' infield.
Instead, we got to see Ryan and Jazz make ridiculous errors and strike out like industrial fans throughout another playoff collapse.
This is how you end a playoff series with no one left on the bench to pinch-hit or pinch-run. This is how you are reduced to fielding a team full of players who can't field the ball or run the bases...and don't seem to much care about it.
To master any profession is to master the details of it, to know the little things, the small improvements that make up a craft.
That is not what anyone in Yankees management knows or cares about.
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