Hal Steinbrenner’s Stance On Brian Cashman And Aaron Boone’s Is Hardly Stunning

For the Yankees, the biggest news of this offseason will pertain to whether Aaron Judge gets re-signed or signs elsewhere in free agency.

For many followers of the team on sports talk radio and social media, they were hoping to hear the other big news would be replacements for Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman in the top two leadership positions.

And while certainly both figures have arguments against why they should be replaced, they are not going anywhere based on anything said by owner Hal Steinbrenner.

Boone is under contract and Cashman is working without a new contract since his five-year deal expired Oct. 31 – eight days after the Astros celebrated their four-game sweep of the Yankees in the ALCS, a series that highlighted how far the gap between the two teams actually is.

It was a long fall from the chants of “We Want Houston” of Oct. 18 when the Yankees survived a tough five-game ALDS against Cleveland and a long way from those first half comparisons of the 1998 Yankees.

It also is a long way from the days of firing people on a whim an era immortalized in Seinfeld when Larry David doing the voice of George Steinbrenner went through the managerial list of the Yankees since 1973, a group that included five stints of Billy Martin and two stints of Lou Piniella and two stints of Bob Lemon.

Those days are long gone, which is why the fact Boone and Cashman will be here next season is the least surprising fact of the offseason for the Yankees.

Boone’s status was briefly addressed last month by Steinbrenner when he told the AP he intended to keep the manager signed to a three-year extension shortly after he and the Yankees ended an underwhelming season that at one point Cashman described as “unwatchable” with a 6-2 loss at Fenway Park.

Cashman’s status is slightly less certain since his contract expired two weeks ago. On Nov. 4 when he gave a roughly 45-minute press conference where the main point was about the desire to retain Judge, he was technically not an employee of the Yankees, though the new contract seems to be a mere formality at this point.

On Monday, the YES Network began its latest installment of “Yankees Hot Stove” a talk show discussing the offseason with some interviews mixed in and Steinbrenner was the interview subject in a segment that was taped shortly after the Astros beat the Phillies in Game 6.

As for Boone, he cited the respect players possess for him and in this day and age respect of a manager is considered as much of an attribute as in-game decision making. And with Cashman he said he respected the man who has held the job since 1998 and worked for the Yankees in some capacity since 1986, the year after Billy Martin’s fourth stint ended.

Perhaps the most notable thing to emerge was Steinbrenner going on the defensive about the Yankees being stagnant, which is a weird concept for a team who won 99 games but with a standard of World Series or else, there could be some validity to that notion for some especially when you break down the timeline of their playoff history in the wild-card era of expanded playoffs.

From 1995 through 2003, the Yankees won six pennants and owned a postseason record of 67-35. Since then their postseason record is 52-59 and of their five ALCS appearances since winning the 2009 World Series, only once did they seem close to winning.

In 2010, they faced an uphill climb by losing three of the first four games to Texas before surviving a fifth game and losing 6-1 in the sixth game. In 2012, they could not hit and were struggling to cope with Derek Jeter’s broken ankle in a four-game sweep by the Tigers.

In 2017, the Yankees were close by winning their three home games before misfiring in two chances to advance but for as much as the Astros’ cheating scandal may have caused the series loss, the Yankees scored three runs in their four games in Houston.

In 2019, the Yankees faced a similar situation as 2010. They won the first game, lost the next three and forced a sixth game only to lose on a game-ending two-run homer by Jose Altuve.

This time, they held the homefield advantage in the AL into early August but were undermanned as evidenced by the shuffling of left fielders, shortstops, and leadoff hitters.

“We get accused of being a stagnant organization sometimes. We’re not,” Steinbrenner said in an interview with YES Network that aired Monday night. “We’re constantly evolving, and Cash is great at that.

“It’s just not accurate,” Steinbrenner then added “If it was, then we would make changes here.”

It was a repeat of past comments when the Yankees cited the injuries to Andrew Benintendi and DJ LeMahieu as depriving the lineup of better contact hitters and the injuries to relievers Chad Green, Michael King, Scott Effross and Ron Marinaccio giving less seemingly automatic sure things in the bullpen when they sped out to a 64-28 record by the All-Star break.

“I’m not going to make excuses, [but] they did go into the playoffs a bit healthier than us,” Steinbrenner said. “But like I said, they’re a great team. I don’t believe they’re doing anything that we’re not doing.

“I think we all have to realize that the team we fielded Opening Day that Cash put together was one of the most dominant teams in all of baseball for months — not weeks, months. Then we got hit by a lot of significant injuries. … Had we rolled into the postseason relatively healthy, particularly with a couple players like Benintendi and LeMahieu, a couple good contact hitters, I think we would have done better in the playoffs. I think we would have scored more runs.”

The differences with a full deck in the lineup are unknown given how well the Astros pitched, but what is known these are not the days of firing people on a whim or making threatening comments about a manager’s job status.