MLB: Ranking the decade’s best general managers
By Bill Felber
MLB: Ranking the decade’s best general managers
4. Brian Cashman, +97.6 games (New York Yankees, 2010-19)
Cashman has run operations in the Bronx for more than two decades, making him the current dean of GMs and also the longest-tenured Yankee GM since Ed Barrow, who he is on course to surpass in 2022.
The Yankees famously – notoriously among their fans – failed to win a World Series during the 2010s for the first decade in a century. Cashman’s problems lay in his frustratingly mixed record at short-term improvement. During four of the decade’s 10 seasons, his short-term moves actually hurt the Yankees’ performance, creating a net short-term impact for the decade of just 5.3 games.
Long-term of course Cashman was as good as expected, improving the team’s core by 92.3 games. That explains the team’s seven postseason appearances during the decade.
What he seemed to have lost the magic to do was to identify the one available player who could put the Yanks over the top in those critical post-season situations.
Cashman is a graduate of Catholic University in Washington who caught on as a Yankee intern during the mid-1980s and worked his way through the ranks. He was appointed to succeed his own boss, Bob Watson, following the 1997 season.