Yankees: Brian Cashman’s big motivational speech did absolutely nothing

The Yankees fell 2-1 to the Blue Jays, hitting .500 on Tuesday after Brian Cashman delivered a motivational speech.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman arrived sullen at Sahlen Field in Buffalo Tuesday with a message for the team.

This tactic has worked before; famously, in 2009, a Cashman flight to Atlanta ignited Francisco Cervelli and the Yanks to topple the Braves after their bats had gone dormant, serving as a turning point in that championship season.

This time? Cashman’s reassurances to the team that they are loved and they are supposed to be in MLB resulted in one run, a solipsistic loss, a .500 record, and an air of disbelief that a collapse of this magnitude was even possible this quickly.

In other words, it didn’t work. Unless Cash told the boys to just give up and get ’em next year. Then perhaps it did.

24 hours after putting the clamps on the Yankee bullpen with their A-Game, the Blue Jays brought their D-Game Tuesday night and it was more than enough to send the Yankees back to .500 in sleepy fashion.

The game might’ve gone better for the Yanks if they’d forgotten to bring their bats to the ballpark, in all honesty. Taijuan Walker and Shun Yamaguchi were so wild through the game’s first five innings that, if the Yankees had simply been unable to swing (due to lack of bat), they might’ve been able to squeak more runs across the plate.

As it stood, they managed one. They went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Gary Sanchez dropped a foul pop up. We know this is not the case, but they do not appear to even be trying.

The one man who must’ve been excited by Cashman’s plea? JA Happ, who went out there and pitched his stones off. In all seriousness, the man was fantastic. 6.1, a pair of earned runs, 10 Ks, one vesting option dangling in front of his head like a wet carrot.

Of course, he also surrendered a two-run home run to Jonathan Davis for Davis’ first hit of the year. That smack was the only difference.

And so fell the 2020 Yankees once again. Now only missing Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the team heeded their leader’s words on Tuesday, but not the ones he intended them to.

Instead, they heard the echoes of his trade deadline comments, and the repeated iterations that he didn’t think any of the reinforcements presented were worth it. They heard that motivation loud and clear, and they turned the other cheek.

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