The sign stands at the corner of Himes Avenue and Columbus Drive, at the far edge of the Yankees’ minor-league facility here, with white letters splashed across a blue backdrop. “27 World Championships.” The titles are grouped in seven tidy rows. A blank space resides beneath 2009. The team has spent 12 seasons trying to fill it.
Brian Cashman, the team’s general manager for four of those championships, believes the club he has constructed for 2022 is good enough to capture a 28th World Series trophy. But he rejects the notion that the franchise is in the midst of an arid stretch. Asked on Wednesday about a championship drought, he disagreed with the premise. He referenced the 2017 edition of the Yankees, resurgent after a brief rebuild, losing a seven-game series against the Houston Astros, an eventual champion later discovered to be using an illegal sign-stealing operation.
“The only thing that stopped [us] was something that was so illegal and horrific,” Cashman told The Athletic at George M. Steinbrenner Field. “So I get offended when I start hearing we haven’t been to the World Series since ’09. Because I’m like, ‘Well, I think we actually did it the right way.’ Pulled it down, brought it back up. Drafted well, traded well, developed well, signed well. The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off.”
Cashman was not howling with rage or screeching about injustice. His tone was level. It is true, he reasoned, that the Yankees have not won since 2009. It is also true that during that time period, the club stood one victory away from the World Series, only to fall to a club later discovered to be cheating.
“It does bother me when people say we haven’t been to the World Series since ’09,” Cashman continued. “We did it all right, by building it to a certain level that could have gotten us to a World Series — if not for something else. But hey! We’re back at it. Every year, we’re still back at it. We’ve been qualifying for the postseason, and we’re going to take this team as far as we can get it, and hopefully we can push through.”
Two years removed from commissioner Rob Manfred’s investigation into the Astros, and five seasons since 2017, the fallout from baseball’s cheating scandals continues. The tentacles spread across the sport. Cashman spoke nine days after the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a letter detailing a 2017 MLB investigation into the Yankees over a separate sign-stealing matter should be unsealed. The Yankees and Major League Baseball could still appeal the ruling, as they did the initial decision by a federal judge in 2020 that the findings should be published.