Cash is still the man

After Buster Olney reported on Friday that there was a difference of opinion among the Yankees brass regarding the signing of Rafael Soriano, a senior team executive said today that there is no rift in the front office and Brian Cashman still has full control of the team.

The mystery executive said that even though Cashman was against signing Soriano he still has the complete trust of Hank and Hal. The GM didn’t want to sign Soriano but was overruled by the Steinbrenners as the team inked MFIKY to a three-year, $35 million deal.

Mystery exec:

"(Cashman) has not lost one iota of control over baseball operations. He has not lost one shred of credibility in the eyes of ownership."

"This is an isolated case and in no way reflects a lack of confidence in Cashman or his plans for the 2011 team.Reasonable people can disagree. There is no rift."

The timing of this Post article is interesting; I think the Yankees just broke it to help Cashman save face. After all, he came out last week and said the team wouldn’t give up their first-round pick for Soriano…which they’ve now done by signing him. That’s a dickhead thing to do to contradict your GM, and now they want to put on the facade that everything’s fine.

Cash:

"The way you build an organization is through the draft, and our assessment was that Cliff Lee was the only player we were willing to give a #1 (draft pick) for. It’s a year-by-year assessment and I’m going to hold on to that pick."

This could be like the early-to-mid 2000’s all over again, with the front office fighting over what decisions to make (a la the Shef/Vlad thing). However, it also could just be one isolated incident so I’m not going to get worked up over it. If it happens again though I’ll start to worry.