Brian Cashman's response to Yankees losing World Series reveals key disconnect

The New York Yankees lost the World Series because of their inability to execute, which has been a theme for ... five years now. It's no secret. It's out there every night for fans to see with their own eyes, even though the organization will say otherwise.

But hey, it seems this time around they're willing to admit it! Brian Cashman spoke to reporters at the annual GM Meetings and was asked about the team's unceremonious exit from the postseason and the criticism that has since snowballed.

Cashman admitted the Yankees "didn't play our best baseball" during the Fall Classic, but something tells us that even if they did, it would've resulted in a loss. Because what is the Yankees' best baseball? Scoring a ton of runs via the homer? They never played tight defensive games. They never consistently hit with runners in scoring position. They always made baserunning gaffes. They weren't particularly athletic up and down the roster.

Cashman also said that defense was a major strength of the Yankees and that they "obviously made some baserunning mistakes" which ... didn't prompt him to do much to fix that despite both being issues all year long?

He also commented on the fifth inning in Game 5 and talked about how unlikely those occurrences were, and fans would be inclined to agree with him. Except, if you have a fundamentally sound and defensively tight team, you're typically not susceptible to those kinds of meltdowns. That wasn't what we'd call random.

Yankees' defensive meltdown in World Series wasn't as random as Brian Cashman wants to believe

The Yankees playing their best baseball probably would not have ousted the Dodgers, had LA been playing their best baseball. The Yankees entered the World Series as the worse team, and they showed it. The front office knew the weaknesses and figured things might play out differently. They didn't. And the result surprised almost nobody.

The disconnect here is the blantant disregard for the basic tenets of the game. What kind of front office thinks defensive and baserunning weaknesses will magically disappear as the pressure increases? What kind of front office thinks the fifth inning of Game 5 was a situation where the baseball gods looked down on the Yankees and decided to cause random, inexplicable chaos?

The Yankees were not a clean team. They were not a team that executed. They coasted on their talent and one-sided clutch performances along the way. The issue is that Cashman and Co. are going to view "getting to the World Series" as progress. With almost any other outcome, we might agree. But the Yankees weren't competitive and got dispatched by their NL counterpart with relative ease thanks to countless mistakes they couldn't recover from.

Until that's acknowledged, Yankees fans simply cannot expect change.