The Major League Baseball (MLB) trade deadline came and went as July turned to August. The New York Yankees, who entered the deadline with a 55-51 record and were on the outside of the playoff picture looking in, did nothing. Their general manager (GM) Brian Cashman refused to make a push with a few big trades and similarly, didn’t trade away any key players to help the team retool. To New York Islanders fans, this sounds all too familiar. GM Lou Lamoriello, time and time again, has stayed quiet, not making a big move one way or another and instead, signaling confidence in the roster in place.
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Cashman and Lamoriello share a lot of similarities. Both executives have experienced success in previous eras and have stood the test of time. Cashman is only 56 years old but he’s been running the Yankees’ front office since 1998 and Lamoriello, while only being the Islanders’ GM since 2018, has led teams to successful seasons since 1987.
The philosophy of “running it back” or keeping the same team together from one season to the next has particularly left fans frustrated, especially with the Yankees’ decisions in recent weeks. Both GMs have their overlapping strengths but the underlying issues when it comes to how they operate have backfired.
Yankees’ Decisions Put Them in Checkmate
This offseason, the Yankees decided to keep the core together and try to contend for the World Series. In Cashman’s defense, this appeared to be the wise thing to do. After all, they reached the American League Championship Series (ALCS) in 2022 and were on the doorstep of appearing in the World Series, something they haven’t done since 2009.
All they needed to do was field the same roster and maybe add one or two pieces to put them over the top. This sounds a lot like the Islanders, a team on the cusp of winning the Stanley Cup after appearing in the semifinal in 2020 and 2021. Lamoriello decided to keep the core together and, like the Yankees, hope that the same veteran-heavy team could take that next step.
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The problem with the Yankees returning the same team is that it meant the players that carried them one season would be one year older the next. Suddenly, the Yankees have a lot of players 30 years or older and only a few reliable contributors in their 20s. Even worse, a lot of the aging stars became undesirable players to acquire at the trade deadline with not many teams interested in someone at the back end of their prime.
The decision left Cashman with minimal options on his plate at the recent deadline. Buying in with an older team that wasn’t near the top of the standings was a non-starter and in the long run, would set the Yankees back further. Trading away key players would have been a better option, but there weren’t a lot of pieces they could move out for reasonable returns. The third option was to do nothing, which he did, and that managed to be the worst route as the Yankees are stuck in no man’s land. Cashman was facing a lose-lose situation but his decision made the fans feel worse about the team, especially after he expressed his confidence in a team that has hovered around .500 all season long.
Lamoriello’s Core Continues To Age
Like Cashman, Lamoriello wants to win with the current groups specifically, the core that allowed the Islanders to reach the semifinal in back-to-back years. The problem is that those players that allowed the Islanders to have success are starting to decline with age.
Eight of their skaters are 30 or older and, more importantly, the Islanders have struggled to inject youth into the starting lineup. It makes them look like a shell of the team that was a Cup contender. Granted, the Islanders made the playoffs last year as a wild card only to be eliminated in the first round by the Carolina Hurricanes. Likewise, they look to be competitive this year as well. That said, there’s a gap between them and the top teams in the Eastern Conference, something that was on full display in the six-game series against the Hurricanes.
The great executives know how to pivot and tweak their rosters to remain Cup contenders. Instead of doing that, Lamoriello doubled down on the aging Islanders. This summer, he re-signed Scott Mayfield, the oldest defenseman on the team, to a seven-year deal and gave backup goaltender Semyon Varlamov a four-year deal. Both players will be in their late 30s when their contracts expire. The Islanders are expected to be competitive next season but it would be no surprise if an aging and deteriorating roster falls apart and is at the bottom of the Eastern Conference fighting to keep their playoff hopes alive as they were in the 2021-22 season.
Lamoriello & Cashman Rely on Past Success For Future
There’s no denying that Cashman and Lamoriello are two of the most successful executives in sports. Cashman has four World Series titles to his name and has fielded some of the greatest teams in baseball history, most notably, the 1998 Yankees who went 114-48 that season and 11-2 in the postseason. Lamoriello built three Stanley Cup-winning teams with the New Jersey Devils, the team he was the GM with for over two decades.
However, the success they’ve experienced came in a previous era. The last time the Yankees won a World Series was in 2009 and the last time Lamoriello won a Cup was in 2003. The criticism both GMs often draw is that the game has passed them by and that they are stuck in their ways while the rest of the league continues to evolve. The on-field (or on-ice) product reflects that with both the Yankees and the Islanders.
The Yankees are built on power-hitting and always have been. This goes back to the Babe Ruth days with the “Murderers Row” teams in the 1920s to the Mickey Mantle teams of the 1950s to the juiced-up (led by Alex Rodriguez), home-run-happy teams of the 2000s. Cashman has leaned heavily into building a lineup that can slug their way to victories, notably acquiring Giancarlo Stanton in 2017, a move that has embodied the three true outcomes the team lives and dies with.
The power-heavy lineup, however, has made the Yankees too right-handed at the plate and possess a surplus of swing-and-miss hitters. In baseball, all the opposition needs to do to limit their batting order is bring in a pitcher that can throw off-speed pitches outside of the strike zone, which results in a surplus of strikeouts. Their .232 team batting average (BA) is second-worst in baseball behind only the Oakland A’s, a small-market team that has been a mess in its own right.
Lamoriello built the Islanders on great defense and elite goaltending. It’s understandable to see why he did; that’s what the Devils looked like when they won three Cup titles in the late ’90s and early 2000s led by Hall-of-Famers Scott Stevens and Martin Brodeur. In an era dominated by great defenses and elite goaltending, the Devils were in their own tier and it made them one of the greatest teams in recent history.
The blueprint raises the floor of the team but it leaves them one step behind on the offensive end of the ice in a league that is becoming faster, more skilled, and more offensive-minded year by year. Lamoriello hired Lane Lambert as the head coach in 2022, hoping he’d implement a faster system but his unwillingness to invest in star scorers, especially in free agency, has left the offense a step back. Since taking over as GM, Lamoriello hasn’t signed a star forward in free agency, notably missing out on elite skaters Artemi Panarin, Johnny Gaudreau, and Nazem Kadri. Instead, he’s invested heavily into the defensive unit, goaltending, and roster depth, leaving the Islanders competent but not good enough to win the Cup.
A lot of coaches and GMs have their system or philosophy and stick with it. Typically, it results in them being replaced after a few seasons when the rest of the league catches up. However, with Cashman and Lamoriello, that hasn’t been the case. Some of that has to do with the merit they’ve established but also the positives of having them operating a team in the first place.
The Pros of Cashman & Lamoriello Operating A Team
The fans in New York want Cashman fired as GM, especially in recent weeks. The bar is high with the Yankees, a team that won 27 World Series titles in its franchise history. The question that nobody wants to ask or has the answer to is who the Yankees would replace Cashman with. A similar question can be posed to Lamoriello. Simply put, is the replacement an upgrade and will set the team up for better long-term success? The answer is that it’s unlikely. A lot of GMs have come and gone in Lamoriello’s tenure, yet at 80 years old, he remains.
There’s also the fact that both GMs will assure that their teams won’t be bad or in a rebuild. Will the Islanders and Yankees be the best in the league? It’s unlikely. Will they be competitive at the very least? Absolutely.
Cashman hasn’t had a losing season as the Yankees GM and the last time the team finished below .500 was 1992. The Islanders only missed the playoffs once in Lamoriello’s tenure, it was the 2021-22 season where everything that could go wrong did. Otherwise, it’s expected to see Lamoriello’s teams in the playoffs as only six times have his teams finished a season with a winning percentage under .500.
Both Cashman and Lamoriello understandably garner frustration from the fanbases. That said, they will always field contenders that if things swing in their favor, can become a title-winner. That is something to root for, especially considering a lot of teams that have been snake-bitten or cursed are only hoping to be competitive someday.