Famous executive defends Yankees' Brian Cashman amid culture concerns

Well-known Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane thinks New York Yankees fans should give senior vice president and general manager Brian Cashman a break amid what Cashman referred to on Wednesday as a "disaster" of a season. 

"Doesn’t anyone care that the Yankees were better than the (Atlanta Braves) for most of the last 25 years?" Beane recently asked during a chat with Bob Klapisch of NJ Advance Media.

Cashman has held his job since 1998, and the Yankees haven't yet posted a single losing season under his watch. New York has won World Series titles on four occasions during Cashman's tenure but hasn't done so since 2009, the club's most recent appearance in a Fall Classic. 

Despite that lengthy stretch without a title, Beane said that it's "remarkable" that "the Yankees are the one team that hasn’t had a down cycle in a quarter century." 

Beane technically is correct, but Yankees fans want more after they watched last year's team that featured reigning American League Most Valuable Player Aaron Judge get swept out of the AL Championship Series by the Houston Astros. Those paying customers started their Thursdays with the last-place Yankees (61-65) sitting at a whopping nine-and-a-half games back in the race for a wild-card playoff spot. 

One ex-Yankees player "who still keeps tabs on the club" suggested Cashman is at least somewhat responsible for the current state of the franchise. 

"That culture has been slowly deteriorating," the former player told Klapisch. "The Yankees have been able to disguise it with Judge being one of the best five-tool guys on the planet. But the star players don’t seem to have that sense of urgency. I just don’t see it. The Yankees used to bully other teams. But that’s not happening anymore." 

Klapisch repeated a previous point and mentioned that Yankees manager Aaron Boone likely realizes he can't "survive a last-place finish" even if team owner Hal Steinbrenner retains Cashman, as expected.

For a piece published Wednesday night, Joel Sherman of the New York Post wrote that he's convinced Cashman's leash won't "become short unless the awful of 2023 is followed by the woeful of 2024" considering the executive's overall body of work. 

Such takes are understandable, but it shouldn't be forgotten that the Yankees' "awful" 2023 can get even worse before the regular-season finale on Oct. 1.