Front office issues. I know Cashman isn’t perfect and we tend to assign the bad deals to ownership and the good ones to him. But I can’t help but wonder if this is a one-time meddling or Now, I was all set to leave that list at three items, but Bill Madden raises some concern about character issues about our new $11.7m/year set-up man:
But losing his No. 1 draft pick wasn’t the only thing that bothered Cashman about signing Soriano. The 31-year-old Dominican’s makeup is – and should be – of great concern. Despite his league-leading 45 saves and 1.73 ERA, Soriano was hated by almost everyone in Tampa Bay last year. His periodic hissy-fits over being brought into games in non-save situations, or being asked to pitch more than one inning wore thin on Rays manager Joe Maddon. The final straw was the last game of the season – Game 5 of the ALDS versus Texas – when Maddon asked Soriano to pitch the ninth inning with the Rays trailing, 3-1. After throwing a tantrum in the bullpen in front of all his fellow relievers, Soriano trudged into the game and promptly gave up a single to Nelson Cruz and a game-breaking homer to Ian Kinsler…
Madden continues and this also bothers me:
While fully aware that Soriano could be a bad fit in New York, the Yankee high command maintained to Cashman he was still by far the best option out there – someone with proven closer ability – and they are confident that Rivera can be the calming, guiding force Soriano needs to thrive here.
If the team’s front office recognized that they were acquiring a player who might be a bad fit in NY but it was something they felt they could remedy, why the heck didn’t they use this same logic to land Zack Greinke?!? Do they think that only a bad attitude can be fixed but social anxiety is too much of a wild card? Someone, ‘splain me.
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By the way, in case you aren’t aware, Soriano has an already well-established moniker: MFIKY. What’s that mean? Read. So expect to see MFIKY used here going forward. Here’s the banner for a site named after that moniker:
Mo can straighten this guy out.
I guess we hope that the "Y" in MFIKY refers to someone on the other team. Oh, and I like this signing even less knowing that Cashman opposed it. What exactly IS the Yankees' track record on players signed over Cashman's objection?
However, I feel better about the Yankees' future, knowing that the Soriano deal was not Cashman's idea. At least Cashman himself can still be relied upon to make (what I consider, at least, to be) sound deals. We just have to expect that every now and again someone in the Yankees' "brain trust" will step forward to overrule him … and that's always been and always will be a risk, so long as the brain trust includes guys named Steinbrenner.
I'm not a big fan of the signing either but this article calmed me down a bit.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankee…
Any time the NY Daily News calms you down, there's something seriously wrong afoot.
Not to mind read too much, but there seems to be a pretty simple explanation for this; knowing Tampa Bay had no long term investment in him, and knowing how rough the market for relievers is, Soriano probably didn't want to get an injury before he had a chance to cash in on a big contract. I guess you could chalk that up to "bad character," but if that's what it was, it presumably won't be an issue now.