New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman trashed his own $300 million acquisition, Giancarlo Stanton. He called the star slugger’s tendency to get injured a “part of his game.”
“We try to limit the time he’s down,” Cashman told reporters in Arizona earlier in November, according to a New York Daily News article published Monday, his first comments to the press since the Yankees ended their regular season campaign. “But I’m not gonna tell you he’s gonna play every game next year because he’s not. He’s going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game.”
Stanton — who the Yankees acquired from the Miami Marlins in 2017 after Miami signed him to a 13-year, $325 million contract — had a miserable 2023 season. The superstar slugger missed 61 games with a hamstring injury. Even while healthy, he was largely ineffective, something Cashman also noted.
“He’s injury prone, we’ve all lived and known that, but he’s never not hit when he’s playing, and this year is the first time that that has happened,” he claimed in video the New York Post uploaded to YouTube.
Stanton’s .191 batting average in 2023 was a career low, but was it lower than a veteran GM throwing his own player under the bus like that? Cashman is clearly grasping at straws to shift blame for the abysmal roster he’s put together. (RELATED: REPORT: Ron Washington Lands New Job With Angels, And He’s The Perfect Choice To Get The Most Out Of Ohtani)
While he did take a sliver of responsibility for the “mistakes” he made in trading for Joey Gallo and signing Frankie Montas, Cashman’s presser was mostly filled with excuses.
“You want me to say that was a mistake?” he asked of his Montas signing. “It turned out to be a mistake. I’m not sure what else in the process we could’ve done other than if I time-zoned it back and knew what was gonna happen.”
He also lamented his trade for outfielder Joey Gallo, whose Yankees tenure was so dreadful that fans actually booed him at a spring training game.
“If I could turn back and say, ‘hey, man, I am sorry that we acquired Joey Gallo and he didn’t play well for us.’ Yeah, I’m sorry he didn’t play well for us, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try, it wasn’t because we didn’t … you know … I don’t know, it was a limited market, we were trying to win, we needed a left-handed bat and he was the one guy I could get,” Cashman sputtered.
Again, sounds like a whole lot of excuses. If Cashman continues to shift the blame, he should probably get used to losing 80 games a season like he did this year.