What was Brian (Fredo) Cashman's worst Yankee move this year? It's not what you think

"I'm smart and I want respect!" -- Brian (Fredo) Cashman

Grrrrr. I am irate at the state of the Yankees these days. A little bit more than a quarter of the 2015 Yankees' season is over, and the team is not in a good way. Yes, the Yanks are only 1.5 games out of first place in the American League East, But they have lost five in a row, and nine of their last 10 games, They are only a game over .500. And unless they get a grip -- and soon -- their season will be falling apart pretty quickly.

As I noted yesterday, even the YES Network's Jack Curry was suggesting changes to shake up the Yanks. Unfortunately, other than calling up Jacob Lindgren, Brian (Fredo) Cashman seems content to wait out these underachieving players. Joe Girardi, too. 

Why else would you see a player like Stephen Drew, whose .177 batting average puts him as 173th of 175 qualifying hitters in the majors, batting sixth, as he did on Saturday? Why else would Esmil Rogers still have a job?  And why in the world was Didi Gregorius the best choice to replace Derek Jeter? Cashman had many years to find and groom Jeter's successor, and this is the best he could come up with? A weak-hitting player who makes so many mental mistakes? Who missed the cut over this guy?

Cashman needs to channel "The Gambler," the classic Kenny Rogers song with the lines about how you've got to know when to hold them and when to fold them. But instead of acknowledging the obvious, not even easy things like giving Drew the old heave-ho, Fredo is staying with the status quo, clapping his hands and believing in fairies. Again.

The New York Post's Joel Sherman asked Cashman yesterday if changes were afoot:

As for the players viewed most on the firing line — Didi Gregorius, Stephen Drew and Esmil Rogers — Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told The Post no changes were planned. All are staying. At least for now. “We have to play better,” Cashman said. “We have to clean up our act.”

The only reason the Yankees aren't further down in the standings is because they are in such a weak division. And the problems with this team aren't just the players above.

Aside from the other usual suspects, like the perennially underachieving Carlos Beltran, can we talk about how overrated Chase Headley is? Wasn't the hot corner supposed to be a power-hitting position? It no longer is in Yankeeland.

Headley's splits this year are .235/.289/.379 (.668 OPS), with nine errors at third. His .688 OPS is 18th out of 22nd among qualifying third basemen this year. This is the guy to replace Alex Rodriguez at third? This is the star who earned a four-year, $52M deal from the Yanks after a very mediocre summer in the Bronx?

Here are the stats for just one of the many third basemen who are doing better than Headley this year. In addition to playing third, Player Y has also played first and second base this season. He has a .273/.326/.383 (.709 OPS) slash line this year, outdoing Headley here, even though Player Y plays in a pitcher's park. Player X also had comparable numbers to Chase last year:

Player Y in 2014: .260/.336/.369 (.705 OPS) with 10 HRs and 48 RBI
Headley in 2014:  .243/.328/.372 (.700 OPS) with 13 HRs and 49 RBI

Oh, and Player Y is only costing his team $516,400 this year, while the Yanks are paying $13M for Headley.

Want to know who Player Y is? It is Yangervis Solarte, the former Yankee traded for Headley. The Yanks got a player who is four years older, more expensive, and not as good as the person they traded him for. Talk about the Yankee way -- or make that the Brian (Fredo) Cashman way. Good grief.

Same old, same old: Brian Cashman looks silly after getting ripped off (again) by Dave Dombrowski

The New York Post's Joel Sherman wrote an excellent column yesterday about how it looks like Yankees GM Brian (Fredo) Cashman was again "fleeced" by Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski. I have been banging this drum for years, and now Sherman is making his own noise in his Post column. He went through all the times that Dombrowski has gotten the better of Cashman, going back to when the Tigers GM was GM for the Florida Marlins, Here are the dopey things Cashman has done with Dombrowski as a trading partner:

• Traded Mike Lowell to Florida and got nothing good in return.
• Gave up Ted Lilly for Jeff Weaver.
• Traded Gary Sheffield to Detroit and got nothing good in return.
• Traded Austin Jackson and Ian Kennedy for Curtis Granderson in a three-way deal. Detroit got Jackson and Max Scherzer in that deal. Granderson was good, but ultimately, the trade still favored Detroit.
• Traded Shane Greene in a three-way deal for the immortal Didi Gregorius. 

Sherman points out that Greene has been great with Detroit -- in his first two starts, he went eight innings each time and has yet to give up an earned run. Meanwhile, Gregorius has been notorious -- notoriously awful, that is. Between the bad hitting, worse fielding, and dumb baserunning, he is a hot mess so far.

Also, as Sherman writes, Greene was very poised as a Yankee pitcher last year, while Didi seems overwhelmed by the New York spotlight. (And those knuckleheaded Yankee fans chanting "Der-ek Jet-er" at him aren't exactly helping!)

Granted, as Sherman notes, it is still very early. But geez, at a certain point, when does Cashman realize that Dombrowski owns him? Even fantasy baseball players eventually figure out which competitors will outsmart them!

I really hope Sherman's column is a sign of things to come with the New York media when it comes to Brian Cashman. They can't blame this season on injuries, and everybody important is healthy -- but just not very good. Except for Alex Rodriguez, that is. You know, they player they have tried to marginalize, ignore, and treat shoddily all year! So much for Cashman's baseball acumen. He really is the Fredo of GMs -- thinks he's smart, but isn't.

Andy Pettitte's Frankie Pentangeli moment

When I heard today about how Andy Pettitte indicated that he might have, um, misremembered what Roger Clemens said about HGH, my first thought was that it was something out of a movie. The Godfather, Part II, that is!

Specifically, I am referring to the infamous scene in which Frankie Pentangeli, who is set to testify as to what he knew about Michael Corleone's crimes, all of a sudden clams up. That's because Corleone has arranged for Frankie Five Fingers' brother to come in from Sicily. Seeing his brother keeps him from testifying -- he tells the Senate committee that he doesn't know anything:

The FBI guys promised me a deal. So I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleone. Because then, that's what they wanted. But it was all lies. Everything. They said Michael Corleone did this, Michael Corleone did that. So I said, "Yeah, sure."

The final script of the movie movie doesn't really explain why just seeing his brother would compel him not to testify, other than it being about Sicily and omerta, although Michael tells his wife Kay that "it was between those brothers." (An aside -- Pentangeli's character wasn't in the first movie, and he serves as a replacement for Clemenza after Richard Castellano, the actor who portrayed Clemenza in the movie, couldn't come to terms with Francis Ford Coppola on a new contract. While The Godfather, Part II is a great movie, I think Pentangeli's role would have been much more powerful if he were still Clemenza, like in the first film. But I digress.)

Anyhow, back to Andy Pettitte. According to his Congressional testimony, he told Laura Pettitte of what Clemens said back in the day about using HGH. However, as Ken Davidoff, now of the New York Post, reminds us:

The government’s best weapon to fight back would be to reveal that Pettitte acquired HGH from Brian McNamee, who will say he injected Clemens with illegal performance-enhancing drugs, and that Pettitte shared the details of the conversation with his wife, Laura. District Judge Reggie Walton has closed both doors, however, saying the McNamee connection would be “guilt by association” and the Laura Pettitte testimony “hearsay.”

Oh, great. Thanks, Andy, for potentially helping to set Roger Clemens free, by saying this today in court:

“As you sit here today, you believe in your heart and mind that you very well might have misunderstood Mr. Clemens in 1999 or 2000?” asked one of Clemens’s defense lawyers, Michael Attanasio. “Could have,” Pettitte said. “It’s 50-50 that you might have heard it, might have misunderstood it?” “That’s fair,” Pettitte replied.

The thing of it is, being so ambiguous, and unsure, will not change anybody's minds who thinks that Pettitte was a rat. It will not repair his friendship with The Rocket. But what it could do is give a jury reasonable doubt on finding Clemens guilty. Lovely. Thanks for nothing, Andy!

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