Yankees: Remembering Brian Cashman’s Best Trades on His Birthday

Brian Cashman is a trade-making God for the New York Yankees. Happy birthday!

New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman remains one of the best in the business — he hasn’t lost his fastball at all through the age of 53, which he turns on this very Friday.

In order to celebrate the Cash God/Ninja Cash’s day right, we figured we’d dive back in to some of his greatest deals of all time.

Buckle up — there’s a lot of them. He’s good at this.

5. The Bobby Abreu Trade

Bobby Abreu was an All-Star, and then suddenly he was a Yankee.

When Brian Cashman pulled the trigger on the Bobby Abreu trade with Philadelphia in the summer of 2006, the rest of MLB was uniquely positioned to rip off the Yanks and demand the world of them.

After all, who would possibly make concessions to the team that had made the ALCS back-to-back seasons, and sported an overstuffed lineup already?

Somehow, Cashman still managed to own the Phillies in this deal. Legitimately…how?

Abreu went to the Yankees at the ’06 deadline, along with pitcher Cory Lidle, in exchange for reliever Matt Smith, 2005 first-round pick CJ Henry, and low-level minor-leaguers Jesus Sanchez and Carlos Monasterios. The NYY got Abreu for 2.5 years, and although they didn’t win a World Series with him in right, he knocked in over 100 runs in ’07 and ’08, living exactly up to his end of the bargain.

As Jayson Stark wrote at the time, “I know for a fact there were teams that offered better prospects for Lidle alone. I don’t get it.” Just baffling.