Smarter Than Me

I assume that Brian Cashman is smarter than me. I begin with that assumption. So I'm figuring he really does have some trick up his sleeve that's going to convince me this offseason hasn't actually made the Yankees worse. Because that would be uncharacteristic.

Cashman is an underrated general manager. People look at the payroll number and say, "Well, even I could put together a great team with that kind of scratch!" But they couldn't. Given the enormous contracts that are givens in the Yankees lineup (Jeter, Mo, Granderson, CC, Tex, and especially Mr. Rod, to name a few), it's amazing he has any room left to put together 25 major league players at one time. But every year, just when you think he's folded his tent and decided third place isn't really all that bad a place for a season or two, Cashman does something--usually a small thing--that makes a huge difference sometime during the baseball-playing year.

This year, and I know it's not even January yet, but still--I'm not seeing it.

I understand this whole business with getting under $189-million (a number virtually every other team would be ecstatic to reach) in 2014. I get that there can't be large multi-year contracts, especially with Robinson Cano becoming a free agent after next season. I comprehend all that. But it's absolutely un-Yankee to see that the team is not going to be as good and shrug. That's not Cashman. I don't believe that's Hal Steinbrenner. But it sure does seem to be what's happening so far.

The big signing of this winter so far is that of Kevin Youkilis and his bizarre batting stance to fill in for the suddenly fragile Mr. Rod for at the very least half the 2013 season (and if you think Mr. Rod will be back on the 4 end of the 4-6 months we've been told it'll take for his hip to fix itself, well, I have some beachfront property in Kansas I'd like to tell you about). Other than that, it's been all retaining players from the 2012 Yankee roster, including Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Hiroki Kuroda and Ichiro Suzuki.

Of course I don't have an argument with any of those signings, but the 2012 roster didn't exactly set the world on fire in October, and not adding something other than Youkilis doesn't improve the team.

Add to that the losses of Russell Martin, Nick Swisher and Raul (Mr. Late-Inning Homer) Ibanez, and you see a bleaker, not brighter, future for the coming season.

But Brian Cashman is, don't forget, smarter than me. So I have to operate under the assumption that he knows something I don't. A lot of things I don't. And I'm guessing at least one of those things Cashman knows that I don't is that there are moves coming other than a three-man platoon at catcher and the speediest, least powerful corner outfielders in recent memory.

It might come in the form of some outfielder we haven't thought about yet, the kind Ibanez was last year, who seems to be a bargain basement barrel scraper and turns out to be an emergency regular and prodigious game-saver nobody saw coming.

It might be that there's a blockbuster trade in the works that will bring some crazy good catcher this way in exchange for some autographed pictures of Jeter and digitized recordings of Bob Sheppard useable to introduce any player you like.

Or it might be that Cashman is so smart he knows that Austin Romine is ready for prime time, that Jayson Nix has been holding back on his power stroke his whole career or that Ivan Nova can play a killer right field.

But I know there's something coming. I don't know what, but something.

Because Brian Cashman is smarter than me.