Bill Madden: Dream on, Brian Cashman. Yankees will pay for not fixing this flawed roster

So Brian Cashman has asked us not to give up on his $279 million Yankee juggernaut. We’ re willing to concede Cashman has a point about some $150 million of the expensive team he put together, headed up by Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Carlos Rodon, presently sitting it out on the injured list. You start with Josh Donaldson, whose onerous contract Cashman took on...

So Brian Cashman has asked us not to give up on his $279 million Yankee juggernaut. Once the team gets healthy again, the Yankee GM assured this week, things are going to turn around, adding: “This is still a championship-caliber operation.”

We’re willing to concede Cashman has a point about some $150 million of the expensive team he put together, headed up by Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Carlos Rodon, presently sitting it out on the injured list. And especially in the second half the schedule will get much easier. At the same time the runaway Rays, who played the entire month of April, mostly at home against teams with losing records, are playing nothing but division leaders and teams with winning records for the foreseeable future, with the exception of three games against the A’s in mid-June.

But what Cashman is unable to justify — and which Hal Steinbrenner has so far chosen to ignore — is how there can there be so much dead wood on a team with the second-highest payroll in baseball behind the Mets?

You start with Josh Donaldson, whose onerous ($29 million still due) contract Cashman took on in his deal of Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela to the Twins for Isiah Kiner-Falefa last year. Donaldson might as well be retired, but just hasn’t announced it yet. Then there is Aaron Hicks to whom Cashman inexplicably gave a seven-year, $70 million contract in 2019 (and is still owed $30 million), who has done zero ever since. Equally inexplicable was Cashman’s decision to sign chronically injured reliever Tommy Kahnle (who has yet to throw a pitch for the Yankees) for $11.5 million last winter.

And even though they may not be costing a whole lot of money, the failures of Clarke Schmidt and Oswaldo Cabrera are a reflection of the Yankees’ player development department’s failure to deliver any impact players during Cashman’s reign as GM other than Judge. The main reason Cashman had no choice but to spend $324 million for Gerrit Cole in 2020 and another $162 million for the oft-injured Rodon last winter was because the Yankees haven’t drafted and developed a frontline starting pitcher since Andy Pettitte.

Cashman probably thought that dismal record was going to start to be reversed when he took the highly touted Schmidt out of the U. of South Carolina with the 16th overall pick in the 2017 draft knowing he was going to need Tommy John surgery. But after carefully nursing him along through the system following the surgery, the Yankees believed Schmidt was ready to assume a prominent spot in the rotation this year, only to discover he has trouble getting left-handers out (.400 opponents batting average) The Yankees’ best homegrown pitcher, Luis Severino, has made 22 starts in the last four years while otherwise Cashman has an abysmal record trading for starting pitching (Javy Vazquez, Jeff Weaver, Denny Neagle, Brandon McCarthy, Andrew Heaney, Sonny Gray, Frankie Montas).

As for Cabrera, who burst onto the scene amid a flurry of energy and versatility last year, he’s struggled mightily and looked lost at the plate (probably trying too hard to hit home runs) and needs to be sent back to Triple-A to regroup. Hopefully, that won’t be the case with Anthony Volpe, who has supplied a bolt of needed energy to the lineup, especially with his base-stealing acumen, but has been inconsistent with the bat so far.

The fact is, for most of the second half last year, this was not a very good (or entertaining) Yankee team that got covered up by Judge’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ home run record. And other than re-signing Judge for $360 million, Cashman did nothing last winter about the everyday lineup, particularly left field. When it became apparent that Hicks and Cabrera weren’t cutting it in left field, Cashman’s analytics geniuses for some reason thought they’d struck gold with the signing of .215-hitting, strikeout-prone Franchy Cordero, who hit .151 with 20 strikeouts and just two walks and eight hits in 55 plate appearances before being shipped out to Triple-A Scranton.

Even when Judge and Stanton are hopefully back together in the middle of the lineup, the gaping holes at third base and left field remain, and second base, where Cashman probably should have traded Gleyber Torres a couple of years earlier while he still had value, is another position of mediocrity. Still, flawed as this Yankee team might be, the consolation is there are no super teams in baseball (we need to withhold judgment on the Rays for a couple more months), especially with the Astros having lost two of their top starters, Luis Garcia (elbow) and Jose Urquidy (shoulder) indefinitely.

We can therefore forgive Cashman for dreaming about the Yankees gradually rising from the AL East basement, making the postseason as always, and going in with a formidable rotation of Cole, Nestor Cortes and a healthy Rodon and Severino. It’s still a long, long way from here to October. At the same time, though, the overall makeup of this Yankee team tells you it’s likewise a very long shot to make the World Series for the first time since 2009.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

Lo and behold, the Fenway Faithful are suddenly looking at Chaim Bloom in a new light. Vilified from almost the moment he took over as Red Sox GM in October 2019 after being forced to trade Mookie Betts to the Dodgers a few months later, Bloom took the brunt of the Fenway heat last year when the Red Sox tumbled into last place — and more this winter when they totally bungled free agent contract negotiations with Xander Bogaerts, allowing the All-Star shortstop to skip to the Padres. It didn’t help either that Bloom was unable to make any improvements to one of the worst starting rotations in baseball. But here we are a month into the season and the Red Sox are off to a respectable start in spite of the rotation which has only one starter with an ERA under 5.00 (Nick Pivetta at 4.99), largely on the efforts of right fielder Alex Verdugo (.315, 5 HR, 18 RBI, .897 OPS as of Friday) and catcher Connor Wong (.284, 3 HR, 10 RBI in his first 24 games), two of the three players Bloom got back from the Dodgers in the Betts deal. Then there is Masataka Yoshida, the left fielder Bloom signed out of Japan to an eye-popping five-year/$90M deal last winter who got off to a horrendous 8-for-43 start before making some adjustments, lifting his average to .317 going into the weekend with a .948 OPS and the second most RBI (24) on the team. …

What on earth is going on in St. Louis where the last-place Cardinals (10-23) are off to the worst start in their franchise history. There are any number of reasons for this Cardinal pratfall: Nolan Arenado is off to a terrible start (.236, 2 HR), their entire four-man outfield contingent — Tyler O’Neill, Dylan Carlson, Lars Nootbaar and Alec Burleson — is totally unproductive while at the same time they mysteriously sent No. 1 prospect Jordan Walker to the minors. The starting pitching with the exception of ex-Yankee Jordan Montgomery has been mostly awful, especially ex-Met Steven Matz (6.39 ERA), and the closer Ryan Helsley has been ineffective. But according to Cardinals insiders (and Cardinal fans), the primary culprit in this stunning fall from grace by a team that hasn’t had a losing season since 2007 is the manager Oliver Marmol, who has shown to be way over his skis. Marmol, a career minor leaguer who worked his way up through the Cardinal system to become manager last year when GM John Mozeliak fired the popular Mike Shildt over “philosophical differences,” has done a terrible job of bullpen management, going all the way back to the wild card series against the Phillies last year, and did not distinguish himself when he publicly lambasted O’Neill for what he felt was a lack of hustle, rounding third base and getting thrown out at home by Ronald Acuna Jr. , the best right fielder in the game, against the Braves, April 4. If ever a manager deserved to be canned it’s Marmol, but will Mozeliak admit his mistake and fire a guy he hired to be his “yes” man?…

Lastly, you have to wonder how long before Buck Showalter has his fill (if he hasn’t already) of Max Scherzer’s constant drama. Of course, we’ll never know.

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