Cashman to Boras: “Don’t try to make us look bad”
February 17, 2010, 11:00 am by iYankees · 4 Comments
The Damon saga, while tireless and unending, has produced some interesting quotables.
Today we have a whole set from Yankees GM, Brian Cashman, via Sam Borden of the LoHud Blog:
In a nice bit of timing, I just spoke to Brian Cashman on the phone and he touched a little more on the Damon process. He says the notion that the Yankees didn’t “engage” with Damon is just plain false and that, despite media reports that Damon might sign for $7 million a year, he fully expects Damon to get the Bobby Abreu-type money of at least $9 million a year.“I mean, that’s what they said when they turned down our last offer,” Cashman told me. “I told them I was at the level of two years, $13 million and they said ‘no bleeping way’ and then we even floated the one year, $6 million with deferred money and they pointed to the Bobby Abreu deal. So I fully expect him to get Abreu money, unless they were playing us the entire winter. That would be like playing poker without any hand at all and, you know, maybe they did that.”
I asked Cashman if ever had regrets about how he handled a particular negotiation.
“I’m sure in the past, I have, I’ve put some things away but in this case, we did what we could,” he said. “We absolutely did what we could. The information we got from them was loud and clear. We followed Johnny’s guidelines, Johnny’s path. What’s happening now is a lot of spin doctoring by the agent. It didn’t work out. Don’t try to make us look bad or the Yankees look bad. That’s not right.”
You have to give it to Cash. He has eagerly refuted Scott Boras’ spin all winter. It’s pretty entertaining.
Original photo by the AP
