Rough Carrigan said:
I'm not trying to say nyah nyah. I'm curious. Do you think that the Steinbrenners prevent Cashman from having a cohesive plan for the organization? And how has this changed from how things were previously? Was the lack of a cohesive plan simply less of a problem when there was a long time holdover homegrown core?
Well, the homegrown core was a lot of it (and they were put together while Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball, right?), plus it was much easier 5-10 years ago to paper over flaws with big money free agents. Now it's a lot harder to do that, because it's increasingly a young man's game.
Also the attempt to get under $189M really fucked the organization up for multiple years, then at the last minute, they ditched it in favor of a bunch of high-priced FAs who weren't all ideal fits. For instance, if there's never an attempt to get under $189M, Russell Martin almost certainly is still a Yankee, he wanted to stay even after Pittsburgh made him an offer. There's no Vernon Wells silliness, no signing Ichiro, etc.
So, yeah, I do think the Steinbrenners interfere a lot more than is desirable, but mostly I think that it's hard to change organizational philoosophy drastically without ownership changing (for any team). With a new owner, the first priority could be hiring the best front office talent around, that would be a way to utilize some of their massive revenues in a positive way. NY needs to rethink everything they do in the wake of the changing conditions of the CBA, etc, they need to come up with a macro plan, and they need to stick to it unless there is a damn good reason to change.
