Yankees: Six reasons to bring Joe Girardi back in 2018

Goes together like a horse and carriage

Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman are tied together by an invisible umbilical cord that has far reaching advantages.

This gets tricky, of course, because Cashman himself has an expiring contract due for renewal (or not) at the end of the season. Which raises the question as to whether or not Girardi would want to stay on if Cashman is not renewed or decides to go elsewhere.

But if Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t see that he has a team operating in total sync with each other, then he’s missed something essential.

Again, the recent trade to shore up the bullpen is all we need to know about the two men with divergent responsibilities and how they work together. As we discussed, Girardi is a bullpen guy. Cashman knows that, and he responded by acquiring the players necessary to give Girardi his best chance to succeed. That’s not as common as we might think.

The ongoing saga of Chris Carter is another example of how the two work together. Cashman, probably on his own, hired Carter to be the Yankees first baseman. Girardi dutifully bit his tongue and went along with the project until he could no longer take it.

Somewhat publicly, Girardi let it be known he was done with Carter. Again, Cashman responded by releasing Carter, and in a round, about way admitted that his experiment was a failure. Both sides treated the matter as the regular course of baseball business.

At some point, all things must pass, and the relationship between the two must end. And maybe it will. But the Yankees have something good going on here, and it has to be factored in by everyone when decision time rolls around in a few months.