(Story originally published in the September 2016 edition of Yankees Magazine)
When Yankees general manager Brian Cashman got to show off some new muscles at the 2016 trade deadline, it was a landmark moment for the franchise. The Yankees — and Yankees fans, it was thought — simply wouldn’t accept rebuilding. Would they?
It turns out that they would — as long as Cashman nailed all the deals. And he did that, and more, rebuilding a farm system into one of the league’s best (in the offseason after the rebuild, MLB.com would rank the Yankees’ system the second-best in baseball). The club acquired Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier as the new organizational cornerstones, but the rest of the players who came over — guys like Justus Sheffield, Ben Heller, J.P. Feyereisen, Dillon Tate, Billy McKinney, and a slew of others, as well — have fans in the Bronx hopeful for the future. Some will arrive sooner than others, but it should be interesting to see develop.
Soon after the deadline, Cashman and his top deputy, Jean Afterman, walked me through all the chaos of the day of the deadline, the way that the last-minute deals went down. I always wanted to get to see how the pieces all moved, how tight things got, what rumors were true. They really gave me the full run-down, and I tried to recreate that in the story.
I hope you’ll enjoy.
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/199119640/yankees-use-trade-deadline-to-rebuild/