November 9, 2009, 10:50 pm
Yanks’ Cashman Won’t Be Swayed
By DAVID WALDSTEIN
CHICAGO – Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman made it clear Monday that
even if Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon had gone 20 for 20 in the World Series
with 10 home runs apiece, it would not change the team’s thinking about how
it would deal with the two impending free agents.
The World Series, and even the entire postseason, is a small sample, Cashman
said Monday, and he will not be fooled into making a rash judgment based upon
it.
“Over the last few years we’ve tried to improve the way we’ve gone about
our decision making, and a part of that is sample size,” said Cashman, in
Chicago for the general managers meetings. “I think you look at the broader
perspective of what somebody’s abilities are. Jerry Hairston, for instance,
is a free agent. If he had hit .700 in the World Series doesn’t necessarily
mean that he would get an A-Rod contract. We’re thankful for the guys who
did what they did, and if you had a great postseason, terrific.
“What they are when they went into October, that’s what they still are,
regardless of how good or how poor they played in the postseason.”
At the same time, Cashman also praised Matsui’s overall body of work.
“He’s one of the game’s great R.B.I. guys,” he said. “There’s probably
not too many people you’d pick to be at the plate with the game on the line
ahead of him. When he’s healthy, he can perform, and thankfully for us it
culminated in a world championship. He stayed healthy all year long, and it
carried into the postseason.”
Matsui, who was the World Series most valuable player, is 35 and has
surgically repaired knees that preclude him, the Yankees have said, from
playing left field.
“As far as we’re concerned, he’s a D.H.,” Cashman said. “We don’t see
outfield in the future for us.”
Those two statements by Cashman, about the danger of small sample sizes and
about how the Yankees would not play Matsui in left field, demonstrate how
remote a possibility it is of his returning to the Yankees. Cashman, however,
is also establishing parameters for negotiations.
By ruling out the importance of the World Series in evaluating a player, he
has taken away the agent Arn Tellem’s best argument for re-signing Matsui.
Also, by declaring that he does not envision Matsui in the outfield, he
undercuts his prospects elsewhere.
Matsui wants to come back to the Yankees, but he also wants to play the
outfield. But that is going to be a difficult sell for a lot of teams because
he has not been able to prove that he can do it. And when the team that knows
him the best says publicly that he cannot do it, that may scare off other
general managers.
Perhaps the only way for Matsui to return is if he does not get attractive
offers from other teams, then agrees to come back to the Yankees on a
one-year deal for relatively little money. The same could be said for Damon.
“We’ll have our talks with the players and the agents and see if our
interests and their interests kind of match up,” Cashman said. “If they are
somewhat close, and normally at the beginning they aren’t, but if they are
at some point, then we’ll be in a position to go forward together. And if
they are not, then we’ll look at alternatives.”
In general terms, Cashman said he did not expect to do much of anything at
these meetings because he had not had enough time to formulate a strategy for
the off-season. Having been in charge of a team that was still playing
baseball less than a week ago, Cashman arrived at the meetings as an
information gatherer instead of a bold actor.
The Yankees have not even had their organizational meetings with their
professional scouts yet. Those meetings will come after these meetings.
“I’d rather do it that way than treat it like a fast-food situation and get
indigestion,” he said.
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