CASHMAN IS FLOUNDERING

Brian Cashman has an explanation for everything. What he still owes Yankees fans is a convincing explanation for why the organization keeps finding itself in these situations.

Now it’s Jorge Posada.

A catcher who helped define a championship era says he doesn’t feel welcome around the franchise he spent his career serving. Cashman responds that Posada is welcome and says they have spoken. Fine. But that response leaves the most important question sitting right there:

How did Jorge Posada come to feel that way in the first place?

You don’t answer that by announcing that the door is open. You answer it by looking at what happens when somebody walks through it.

Because an invitation and a welcome are two different things. Anybody who has ever entered a room and immediately understood that nobody particularly wanted them there knows the difference.

Cashman can dispute the suggestion that the Yankees have frozen Posada out. He cannot simply declare Posada’s experience invalid.

And I see no reason to assume Posada invented it.

What would be the point? What does he gain by telling the public that returning to the organization makes him uncomfortable? That is a painful admission from somebody whose baseball identity is tied to that uniform. The reasonable response is to take him seriously.

Instead, Cashman’s defense included references to spring training invitations, Old-Timers’ Day and Posada appearing on his daughter’s television program. Those connections are real. They still don’t settle whether Posada feels valued inside the baseball operation.

An appearance on a television show is supposed to resolve this?

Come on. So Stupid.

The concern is whether the Yankees want what Posada knows. Whether they welcome his judgment. Whether a former player can offer an uncomfortable observation without feeling that he has become an inconvenience.

There is reporting that makes that question harder to dismiss. Columnist Bob Klapisch cited an unnamed former teammate from the Joe Torre era who described alumni being invited to camp but discouraged from working meaningfully with current players. 

That is one anonymous account, not proof of an organizational policy. But it gives the Yankees something more substantial to address than whether an invitation was sent.

If that account is accurate, what exactly are these champions being invited to do?

Stand around? Smile? Remind everybody how great the Yankees used to be?

The organization cannot keep selling the authority of its past while appearing uncomfortable when people from that past exercise it.

That is why Cashman looks like he is floundering here. He is defending access when the complaint is about belonging. He is producing examples of contact when the question is about respect.

And then there was his observation that former players now have more platforms through podcasts and social media. Yes, they do. Cashman acknowledged that public criticism comes with the territory. But the existence of a microphone does not explain the substance of the complaint.

Posada didn’t become uncomfortable because somebody invented a podcast.

The microphone allowed fans to hear about it.

That distinction matters to an organization that seems increasingly occupied with answering criticism instead of making the criticism harder to justify.

To my eyes, this has the look of public-relations panic: explain the invitations, emphasize the phone calls, assure everyone that the relationship is fine. But a relationship clearly needs attention when one person publicly says he doesn’t feel wanted. A denial cannot do the repair work.

And fans are entitled to be exhausted by the broader routine. Every disappointment produces another explanation. Every criticism requires more context. Somehow, accountability always seems to arrive with a paragraph explaining why expectations need adjusting.

The Yankees built their reputation on a standard that made people uncomfortable. Now the people reminding them of that standard seem to make the organization uncomfortable.

That is a miserable reversal.

Nobody is demanding that Posada run the team. Being a great player does not automatically make someone a great coach or executive. But his experience deserves a serious hearing, and his account deserves more than an attendance list.

Cashman should be asking what the organization has done to create this distance. He should be concerned that a player so closely associated with its greatest strengths feels disconnected from it.

The Yankees still have the name. They still have the uniform. They still have generations of fans who desperately want to believe those things carry the same weight.

But the Yankees are not the Yankees anymore simply because the merchandise says so.

That identity has to be earned by the people running the place.

Right now, Cashman’s explanations are doing very little to earn it.