Brian Cashman Defends Yankees Trade Deadline Moves: "We Are Championship Caliber" | Carton Show WFAN

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
Back to The Carton Show, Craig Carton, Chris McMonigle, Big Mac, of course, number to join, 888-808-1019.
Happy to have on the show with us right now, the general manager of the New York Yankees, Mr. Brian Cashman. Brian, it's Craig and Big Mac. Good afternoon, thanks for a couple minutes. Say, we do appreciate your time.

**Chris McMonigle** (0:18)
Thank you, Brian.

**Brian Cashman** (0:18)
No, you got it, Cash.

**Craig Carton** (0:20)
All right, so obvious first question. You know Yankee fans are reacting to the inability for you guys to acquire specifically a catcher.
How close did you come and was the at the end of the day, the asking price just too rich for your blood? Or is there another reason why you feel like you were unable to acquire a catcher this time around?

**Brian Cashman** (0:39)
Well, first, that lane, that shopping lane is very, very thin in terms of opportunities. That's why you didn't really see anything moving outside of there's one. There's different levels in that list. So obviously Adley Rutschman was the big, big fish impact player. He's currently on the IL, but he would come off sometime at the very least in mid-August from a wrist issue. So he's obviously an impact for an all-star caliber type that we certainly had conversations about without a doubt with Baltimore over the last three weeks.
But ultimately, they took a big offer from Boston. They were expecting to get a lot. They did get a lot, and they made certain offers to us that essentially I could not be comfortable doing.
So were there opportunities that existed? Were there conversations that were going on? The answer is yes. But they did extremely well, as you would expect they would. Michael Elias is an excellent general manager, and he had an excellent player that he put to market, and he was able to capitalize on that. Yeah, the price that was going to cost to us, I thought would be detrimental to the short term right now, and as well as the long term.

**Craig Carton** (1:57)
So you're not, you were not the way many people were surprised at what they got from the Red Sox, but you thought the package that you would have had to have offered was just too rich for your blood at this moment, is that fair to say?

**Brian Cashman** (2:10)
Yeah, it was a little bit of a combination of really tough, it's gonna hurt us on the current roster, and hurt us in the future. The combination was tough, just too tough for, so something that I would not recommend doing, and wasn't sure if that was actually, it benefited us one way, it hurt us in a lot of other ways too, but ultimately the Red Sox were able to deploy their players and find a way to secure the player. I can't tell you if I said yes, that that trumps theirs anyway, but I was unwilling to say yes to what it would have taken to pull him down.

**Craig Carton** (2:47)
Was there a thought after both Boston and Tampa got catchers that you guys would have pivoted to a guy like Stevenson and Cincinnati or one of the other players, maybe not as well regarded as the two guys that were the first two to go? Or did you not have conversations merely to get a different name in here to upgrade the catcher position?

**Brian Cashman** (3:08)
Yeah, the Tampa situation, they got a left-handed catcher in Hicks, so obviously we don't need a left-handed catcher. So our aisle we were shopping in was a right-handed catcher or a bigger, everyday, upgraded catcher, if it made sense. Now, while doing so, recognizing the limit of available players that would fit the profile that could handle our pitching staff, our catchers are doing an excellent job on the defensive side and managing the pitching staff well separately, has some significant offensive potential that has not materialized, especially this year. But I would have to acknowledge and recognize that the arrow is pointing in a stronger direction now in the last month, you know, so the month of July, for instance, and now bleeding into August, you know, and he had a good game yesterday, again, offensively.
His arrow offensively is going in the right direction. So anyway, it's a limited market and we did engage on the players that we thought we could come in here and plug in and manage our staff on the defensive side or provide also that right-handed bat. But there was, you know, in terms of exhausting those options, there was a few that we tried to pull down to other ones we thought we were getting close to, but then they got away from us when the other teams we were dealing with changed their minds and they didn't go anywhere.