Could Brian (Supergenius) Cashman be on his way out? Please, Hal (Rip Van Winkle) Steinbrenner, make it happen!

Believe it or not, I actually have a smidgen of hope this week for the Yankees. Not for this season, of course. I have never had any expectations that the Yankees would actually go anywhere in 2014, other than to the bottom of the AL East. But that Hal (Rip Van Winkle) Steinbrenner may actually have stirred from the slumber he has been in over the past five seasons and is finally realizing that the Yanks need new leadership in the GM spot. 

When Hal was in Baltimore the other day to select a new MLB Commissioner, he was asked about the state of the Yankees. Steinbrenner said that the hitters need to “step it up” and that A-Rod would be back in 2015. These tidbits were the focus of the initial stories on what he said. Buried in these articles was the most important thing of all — that Hal did not say that Brian Cashman would definitely be re-signed to a new contract. Instead, he said:

“We’re so busy right now, trying to figure out who’s going to be playing in any given game, much less that,” Steinbrenner said. “We’ll be talking about that soon enough. But you know me. We’ve got enough things to worry about during the season. That’s where our focus needs to be.

“Let me get to October — hopefully the end of October, beginning of November — and we’ll go from there.” 

Funny thing was that the New York media initially did their best to pooh-pooh that assertion: for example, New York Post columnst Ken Davidoff insisted that Steinbrenner’s “comments Wednesday felt less like a non-endorsement and more like a sense he had too many other current items on his plate.”

And John Harper of the New York Daily News said on “Daily News Live” that “I don’t think Cashman is in any danger” because “I don’t think the Steinbrenners really have the stomach for a big GM search.”

Keep in mind, though, that the NYC media is in the tank for Cashman. Any other GM, for any other team (or sport) would be on the hot seat now. But Teflon Cashman, who puts Teflon Torre to shame, gets a pass from the press. The fact that none of them have the guts to even question whether he should return is pretty telling. To my knowledge, until Hal’s comments, there hasn’t even been a single story written in the New York papers about whether it is time to consider a new Yankee GM, at the same time New York Mets’ GM Sandy Alderson’s status has been questioned multiple times.

Is Rip Van Winkle finally stirring?

But at a certain point, doesn’t Steinbrenner have to be looking at getting a new GM to deal with MLB right now, and in the future? Not keeping on a has-been like Cashman who is still acting like it’s 2003, when the financial realities of baseball gave the Yankees such an overwhelming advantage? Most teams have their own regional networks now, with all the extra money that entails. And they are signing their good players to long-term contracts early. So that means that free agency, which used to be like shopping at Neiman-Marcus, is now often more like rummaging through Goodwill for old things.

Unlike the NYC media, I would have to be like Dory from “Finding Nemo,” with the inability to remember anything that happened longer than five minutes ago, to think Cashman is doing a good job. And so would Hal. Two weeks ago, the press was falling all over themselves to praise Cash’s smooth trade moves. Now, it is nothing but crickets when reality has set in. The Yankees have lost five in a row and are such an inept opponent that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t even doing standard pre-game practice for this weekend’s series.

Cashman’s smooth moves are pathetic

Oh, and here are the current Yankee slash lines for those great hitters Cashman traded for:

Stephen Drew: .170/.204/.259 (even worse than his numbers as a Red Sox!)
Chase Headley: .250/.345/.368 (slightly better than at San Diego, but pathetic for a power position)
Martin Prado: .163.217/.256 (and the Yanks now owe him $10M a year for the next two seasons)

Robinson Cano: Miss him yet?

Still think Cashman is doing a good job, folks? Let’s look at what Robinson Cano is doing with the Seattle Mariners. His slash line is .330/.398/.476. His Mariners just overtook the Detroit Tigers for the second AL Wild Card spot. His team is going somewhere this year. But hey, the Yankees won’t have to pay him eight years from now. Of course, they seemed to have forgotten that before Year 8, they might have actually had a great player.

And where are all the New York media’s articles about Seattle’s great play this year, thanks in no small part to Cano? The media narrative in December was that Cano was going to a nowhere team. Yet a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity — he is leading his team on a playoff run! Imagine that! (An aside: I expect over the next few weeks, when Seattle’s drive for October finally gets noticed by the NYC media, for Cashman to plant some stories in the press about how he really wanted Cano back, but was overruled by Hal. Remember, you heard it here first!)

Maybe John Harper is right, that Hal doesn’t have the stomach for a GM search. If that is true, then the kids need to just sell the team already. Would they rather just see their money wasted, year after year, than to show some intestinal fortitude?

Is Brian Cashman finally going to be given the old heave-ho?

Or maybe Hal is finally fed up. The dirty little secret about the Yankees’ decent attendance this year is how many of those tickets are sold at discount sites like Groupon and Living Social, with people paying much less than full price. And that is with this being Derek Jeter’s last season, and with having Masahiro Tanaka in the first half. What are things going to be like after Jeter retires and if Tanaka gets Tommy John surgery?

Hal is supposedly a numbers guy. He has to know that the ticket sales and the ratings are going to plummet even more next year. The Yankees’ farm system is so bad that Cashman keeps on trading and signing for has-beens as position players, instead of promoting from within. And even signing the likes of Jon Lester will not keep this team afloat, not if the idiot GM stays in charge.

As Dr. Phil always says, if you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’re gonna keep on getting what you’ve been getting. Is Hal Steinbrenner going to finally change things up, stop being afraid that he will be compared to his father if he actually has the nerve to fire someone, and clean house, starting with his idiot GM? I don’t know for sure, but I am more hopeful today that it actually could happen than I have been in years.