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Brian Cashman has the same description of this miserable Yankees season as anyone else who’s watched: “It’s been a disaster.”
The general manager, saying the team is “embarrassed” by its performance, gave his honest assessment of the last-place Yankees prior to Wednesday’s 9-1 win over the Nationals, Cashman’s team snapping its longest losing streak in 41 years.
Instead of preparing for the postseason, then, Cashman — along with owner Hal Steinbrenner and many others — will try to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
That evaluation will include the job statuses of Cashman and Boone — and just about everyone else in the organization.
“I think it’s all gonna be evaluated,’’ said Cashman, who signed a new four-year deal prior to this season. “We’ll look at every aspect of the operation. It takes us where it takes us. Stay tuned. We’ll all be evaluated, including myself. … Unfortunately, we’re gonna have some time to do that.”
Asked why he and his group are the right people to be part of that process after this season’s ugliness, which included a nine-game losing streak entering Wednesday, Cashman said, “I think we’ve got a pretty good track record, a pretty good run of success.”
He also noted that preseason expectations were high both inside and outside the organization.
“I don’t think anybody on this planet, entering or leaving spring training, believed this wasn’t a playoff-contention team. I certainly didn’t. At the same time, s–t happens and a lot of it happened. And it’s on our hands.”
The all-encompassing review will include the players the team has brought in, to why certain players underperformed, why there have been so many injuries, as well as the science and analytics departments.
“There are a lot of buckets to evaluate,’’ Cashman said. “That’s what losing teams do. It has to be objective. … I think everything is on the table.”
Asked about the main culprits, Cashman and Boone both pointed to the offensive struggles that have plagued the team throughout the year — before and after the firing of former hitting coach Dillon Lawson.
“I’ll say everybody has had a little bit of a hand in it, top to bottom,’’ Cashman said. “It’s our job to find where. I’ve met with Hal Steinbrenner already. This is not something we’re accustomed to or used to. There’s definitely gonna be a lot of internal assessments going on.”
Those assessments have already begun in the clubhouse, with high-priced stars like Anthony Rizzo — one of many in the midst of a highly disappointing season — acknowledging the status of the team.
“It’s hard to swallow when you’re in the middle of it,’’ Rizzo said of the cellar-dwelling team. “I don’t believe this is the new normal here. But that’s on us to dig out of that.”
Even he acknowledged that isn’t likely to happen this year.
“You have to be realistic with how far back we are in the wild-card [race], we’re not out of it, but it’s a very, very long shot to be in it,’’ Rizzo said. “We want to win today and break this dreadful losing streak.”
“We’re not mathematically eliminated, but we’re certainly in a bad spot,’’ Cashman said of their “minute” chances of making the playoffs. “We recognize that. The expectations for us are to do everything we can to compete.”
On Everson Pereira and Oswald Peraza being called up, which some looked at as a declaration that the season is over, Cashman said, “They earned the right. They’re not being used as pawns. … We haven’t been able to scratch runs across, so you try to do something different and see if it ignites anything. You learn about some other guys and we’ll go down fighting. We’re certainly not proud of it.”
And it sets up what will be an unusual — and unwanted — October in The Bronx.
“This is a rough time,’’ Cashman said. “When you’re a part of something that’s supposed to be really good and it turns really bad, it makes for a horrific experience. We’ve got to fight through it and find what caused it.”
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