GM Trade History: Brian Cashman

I realize the yankees usually make big splashes in free agency, but his resume outside of championships, doesn't seem all that impressive. No great trades that really stand out and with an increasing payroll, they have had less success. His best work has been lately to reduce payroll and put an all around team on the field, but so far, that hasn't led to a great amount of success.

Their payroll went up a 140mill in 10 years? whew...

I dont see any standout trades with this guy. No terrible ones either. Keep in mind that his signings have been terrible. A lot of 7-10 year contracts. Most notably Jeter, Damon, Pavano,Farnsworth,Arod,J Wright,Posada...just a lot of bad signings. Youd think being the Yankees that players would want to go there....so why are they overpaying? I really dispise this franchise. The front office is a joke and embarrassment.

I'd say the Bobby Abreu deal worked out pretty well

How about that trade for that Rodriguez guy work out? I know that it was a salary dump for Texas, but Cashman got the best player in baseball for what? Just for Soriano(and getting cash back).

Wasn't Hughes a first round choice? He is listed as a 23rd or so round pick? It seems to just be an oversight as he is listed as a compensatory pick

Cashman's most notable deals were the Arod and Clemens deal. Many deals were made by George Steinbrenner at the time. Many deals were made with the Yankees having one of the most barren farm systems in the Major Leagues.

"How about that trade for that Rodriguez guy work out?"

I would say not that great--how many championships have they won with him? And before you say you can't judge a trade for a player by championships, I'd say in this case you could moreso than any other...

Every time A-Rod has changed teams, the team he joined has performed worse than expected, and the team he left has performed better than expected. Maybe he's just unlucky.

ok.. check this out ...

I think everybody's missing the context of most these trades. Cashman has done much better than you think.
For starters, the Knoblauch deal paved the way for the GREATEST YANKEE SEASON EVER and the first of THREE World Series wins in a row. You could probably even argue that the Yankees haven't been the same since they let Knoblauch go.
The Roger Clemens deal was close to being a heist.... and the fact that Cash was able to turn Irabu into Ted Lilly AND Jake Westbrook when Irabu was an absolute LAUGHING stock is mind boggling..... Vizcaino may seem a like a minor trade, but you could probably argue that if Vizciano doesn't deliver that extra inning hit in game 1 of the 2000 World Series, that the Yankees would have gotten beat by the Mets that year (eaily the turning point of the series).... and honestly, we don't win in 1999 without David Justice - he absolutely carried us to the finish line that year (not to mention the HUGE HR against Seattle in the Playoffs).... and then, once he was on the decline and needed an obvous change of scenery, Cash was able to turn David Justice into a MUCH NEEDED Robin Ventura, who worked out very well for us for quite a while.... Marcus Thames for Ruben Sierra was actually a very nice deal for both teams for a couple of years (not all trades should be lopsided and he was a good, solid yankee)... Aaron Boone, even with his HUGE, HUGE game 7 homerun against the red sox in 2003 as his signature moment in life - the fact that he hurt himself and opened the door for AROD to be a yankee is JUST AS IMPORTANT as any play he could have ever made (thank you!).... trading for vasquez in 2003 would be like trading for Volquez in 2008 (maybe not exactly, but close) - the yankees HAD to take the chance on that arm - ALL of baseball wanted that kid then... we probably don't make the playoffs in 2005 without snagging Chacon and Leiter (and not mentioned, calling up Aaron Small).... and look at that Abreu deal - talk about robbery!.... how about trading RJ BACK to Arizona for the coup we got there, especially considering how FINISHED RJ was/is at the time.

I think the two biggest assets of Cashman are this:
glancing over that list, you'll see nobody traded by the yankees is of any significant loss (unless you count soriano). It's actually very impressive to be honest with ya. Seems more like cashman can do a lot with very little, and the organization does an incredible job HYPING their prospects up

the other amazing part of cashman is how he can make a team take an OBVIOUS burned out, beat up, NY horrible player and actually get another ballplayer back in return... that list is almost more impressive... think about Hideki Irabu.... Randy Johnson .. Robin Ventura.... Gary Sheffield... Jose Contrerar\s.... Felix Heredia (can't believe he was able to get anything more than a rosin bag for this guy).... tony womack... jay witasick.... jaret wright ... paul quantrill ... gabe white...etc

i think cashman is exceptionally good at what he does. the yankees would be foolish to let this guy go. Just look at what he was able to accomplish in the farm system, and if the yankees are able to get to the playoffs this year - in this 'semi-transitional year - the rest of baseball is in trouble for the next 5-10 years... i just hope cash is there long enough to enjoy it.

He's had his blunders and the expectation is unreal for him. but overall he's done reasonably competent job. though he does seem to combine poor luck and poor choices when it comes to FA pitchers.

the Carl Pavano and Kei Igawa deal really sticks out, while both were hardly the most fool proof picks at the time no body really thought either could turn out THIS badly. really bad luck on Carl Pavano's part and poor scouting on Kei Igawa's part seem to have done him in there.

He did do pretty good jobs in picking guys out of scrap heaps. he even saved the 05 season almost entirely thx to that (and to some extend, so far this season too) and getting Gillick to basically give Bobby Abreu away for free was pretty crazy in hindsight. of course, he does have almost unlimited payroll leverage.

he's also pretty conservative in his talks to the media (which i think is a plus for a GM, giving away your thoughts in public is rarely a good idea for someone in those dealings) making it tougher to assess what he did or didn't think.

He's hardly perfect, though he does seem to suit the NYY situation better than most .

I believe Brian Cashman has been an ineffective GM. Give him credit for bailing out bad teams with the likes of Justice, Chacon, Small, etc. However, he is the reason the teams were bad. Seems like Cashman can only pull off the long term big bucks deals like Giambi, Pavano and Johnson. As a result the Yankees have lacked detpth since he arrived. Boston and the Yanks need a First Baseman but boston signs Casey and we get Betamit. He signed Womack when he could have had Polanco. We made no move on Maglio Ordonez when he was available and cheap. Getting rid of Vazquez was a mistake, he just had a bad run. Since then he has been very good and where are the players he was trded for? How about the Lilly for Weaver trade, or what happend to Jake Westbrook? Cashman has tried to build an offense aout of power hitters that strike out a lot. In fact, where would the Cashman Built Yankee teams have been without the pre-cashman players (Jeter, Riviera, Pettit, El-Duque, Posada). I am not as concerned about where the Yankees are as where they are going.

People forget that George Steinbrenner didn't give Cashman complete control. The Pavano signing was just bad luck....he was coming off his best season and was coveted by many teams but came out and said he wanted to be a Yankee and they hammered out a deal. It was actually thought to be a below market deal at the time of the signing because Pavano wanted to come to NY.

I personally really don't think Cashman wanted anything to do with Giambi....its just not the type of player he seems to covet. He was notoriously against signing both Arod and Posada, those deals were out of his hands.

Since Hal has taken over majority control of the Yanks and given most of the power to Cashman now there really have been no bad moves so far. You can talk about the deals this past offseason with CC, Burnett, and Tex but all 3 of them were worth the money and are definitely the types of players you want on your team, especially in the primes of their careers. And I will call it now, come playoff time Burnett will be in the company of clutch playoff pitchers like Beckett and Schilling.

And now that Cash has control you will see more moves for role players like the Hinske deal. He landed Nady and Marte in a great deal last year (both are hurt but thats just the luck of the draw, no GM in baseball would have hesitated to make that deal from a Yankees standpoint) and the got Swish for pennies.

People talk about him not being able to build from within.....but the Yankees have more players on their roster from their system than 90% of teams in baseball. Their entire bullpen consists of Yankee products or pitchers acquired in trades (Bruney was a wiaver wire pick up). I think with the performances of Hughes, Aceves, Robertson, Coke, Cervelli, Gardner, Pena, Melky etc. this year we can finally lay to rest the claim that the Yankees have no ability to build from within. Its scary to think that the Yanks farm system/MLB team is stocked with young talent on top of being able to go out and get the right FA's (Tex, CC).