Brian Cashman Explains Why Yankees Made So Many Moves at Trade Deadline
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The Yankees entered play this month with more wins than any team in Major League Baseball.
That didn't stop general manager Brian Cashman and his staff from making five impactful trades before Tuesday's trade deadline.
New York went all-in on the trade market, acquiring outfielders Andrew Benintendi and Harrison Bader, starter Frankie Montas and relievers Lou Trivino and Scott Effross. They dealt starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery to St. Louis in the Bader deal, parting ways with Joey Gallo in exchange for a pitching prospect from the Dodgers' farm system.
Shortly after the deadline passed, and after walking through the decision process behind each of those trades, Cashman was asked what led to this frenzy of moves.
The general manager reiterated that his job is to make this team better, no matter what. In this case, he saw opportunities to fill holes that were created by injuries while improving at certain positions with a championship run in mind.
"Ultimately, our record through August 2 won't guarantee us anything in October," Cashman said. "Just because we played exceptional baseball [with a high] winning percentage through August 1, doesn't mean we get to kick back and relax and assume that it'll continue that way. The job at hand is to find ways to acknowledge what's taken place thus far, fortify it and improve upon it, so we can give it the best chance because our player group, with our manager and coaching staff, they've honored everything that we put forth."
Cashman added that this team proved in the first half that it has the potential to make this a special season. If there's ever been a time to bolster this roster and make it even better for October, this is the year.
"Most of our games that we played, we've won a lot of them, but even the losses, there's very few that we were taken out and we weren't going down to the very last at-bat with a chance to win those too," he said. "This team is hungry, they want to do great things, they're not arrogant about it, they know they gotta fight for everything and they're willing to do so. So you want to honor that, you want to reinforce that, and certainly that's what we tried to do as an organization from Hal Steinbrenner all the way down every step of the way of finding ways to give it a better chance, despite the record we had already. What can we do to give our manager a better array of choices moving forward?"
There are no guarantees, even after adding impact players to a division-leading club. New York could face more injuries and lose other key assets like relievers Michael King and Chad Green. Outfielders Giancarlo Stanton and Bader, starter Luis Severino, relievers Miguel Castro and Zack Britton and more are all currently sidelined on the injured list.
By adding players at each of those positions, however, New York is in a better position to contend than they were before they started making moves last week.
"We feel with the current group we have and the additions, we've done the best job that we could," Cashman said. "Clearly there's a lot of things out there that you'd love to get your hands on. We have what we got to show for our efforts. We certainly took shots at a lot of things that were out there that we didn't get.
MORE:
- Yankees' Derek Dietrich Suspended By MLB For Banned Substance
- Yankees Claim Reliever From Rays, Bolster Bullpen Depth After Deadline
- Why the Yankees Believe They Can Get More Out of Lou Trivino
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