Cashman or Not, Yankees Must Embrace Rebuilding

This week, reports have circulated that the Steinbrenner boys have made it clear to Brian Cashman that they would like to re-sign him at the end of his current contract, apparently believing that the man who built the disappointingly mediocre 2008 Yankees also has the insight to craft the roster of the (it is hoped) surprisingly good 2009 Yankees. The only thing that's not clear is why they think that.

No insult to Brian Cashman is intended. He clearly is intelligent and experienced, and is an affable and generally forthright communicator with the public. As with all general managers, he's made some good moves and some stinkers. He is a perfectly workable general manager, emphasis on general — if you use him for the purposes described on the box and respect the "no user-serviceable parts" warning, he should be perfectly fine under standard operating conditions. Unfortunately, the Yankees are about to enter a period that's anything but standard, a period in which they may require a complete rebuilding, one that takes not one overhaul, but several. The Yankees will say that they don't need to rebuild, that they are only a few pieces away — Mark Teixeira, perhaps, or C.C. Sabathia — from being back in championship form. Cashman will say this, and when you hear those words, you should know to a cold certainty that things are going to get worse before they get better. Consider the near-term outlook: Four key members of the team are potential free agents. Arguably none of them should be re-signed based on their age and other limitations; Bobby Abreu (35 next season), Andy Pettitte (37), Jason Giambi (38), and Mike Mussina (39) are year-to-year players at best. Of the regulars under contract, just one, the supremely disappointing Robinson Cano, will be younger than 30 next year. Alex Rodriguez will be 33. Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui will be 35. Mariano Rivera will be 39, and as great as he has been this season, all things must pass. The day of these players is passing and there are few replacements in the system for the position players, while the Yankees have shown little intuition when it comes to turning their prospective pitchers into major leaguers.

The 2009 starting rotation is all question marks. Mussina and Pettitte could go or return and be ineffective. Chien-Ming Wang will be coming off a major injury and has always had durability problems. The Yankees are again conflicted about Joba Chamberlain's role, possibly sending him back to the bullpen to start the 2009 season because he's so special that the Yankees can't bear to use him for fear of breaking him, like a beautiful toy that you can't play with because it will no longer command "mint in box" prices once you take it out of the packaging. Chamberlain will turn 23 later this month, an age at which Dwight Gooden had already pitched nearly 1,200 major league innings. Chamberlain has pitched 114.1. Between those two extremes there is probably a happy, safe medium, but the Yankees seem determined not to find it, preferring to deprive themselves of a top starting pitcher. At this point, Chamberlain seems destined to go down as one of the great missed opportunities in franchise history, which is saying a lot given the team's long-standing habit of mishandling young pitchers. Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy remain unknown quantities.

The Yankees show no signs of recognizing the peril of their position, one roughly analogous to that of the Baltimore Orioles team, which beat out the Yankees for the 1997 American League East title. They went 98-64, which is a far better record than the Yankees will finish with this year, yet they, too, desperately needed an infusion of youth; the vast majority of the Baltimore roster was populated by players of about 32. Instead, they made no significant changes. The veterans got a little older, and in many cases played well. Yet their trade value was ebbing away, while simultaneously their farm system, much like the Yankees' farm, wasn't producing much in the way of quality replacements.

More pages fell off the calendar. Baltimore's vets moved on without bringing anything in return. The Orioles wouldn't or couldn't trade, so when their veterans left, they departed as free agents. If they brought draft picks, the Orioles didn't know what to do with them. More free agents were brought in, repeating and accelerating the cycle of frustration. Flash forward: The Orioles are about to complete their 11th consecutive losing season. Once a team gets to the point the Orioles reached, where the whole roster is coming out of the Pavano pool of the aged and infirm, it is very hard to dig out.

The Yankees are at exactly the same point in the life cycle of their team as the Orioles were just more than 10 years ago, if not further along. Their farm system is killing them. The major league roster is declining in value. The general manager who recognizes this is the one for the Yankees job. That might be Brian Cashman, but then again it might not.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of "Forging Genius," a biography of Casey Stengel.