Stealth Bomber: How Brian Cashman rebuilt the aging Yankees without tanking

In New York, it's never easy to lose and rebuild - just ask Phil Jackson.

Yet there in the Bronx sits Brian Cashman, who's beaten the New York pressure system so quietly we barely noticed it happening.

Oh sure, everybody knows the Yankees are rebuilding, and the "Baby Bombers" have taken baseball by storm. Though, perhaps "Stealth Bombers" is a better term for this team. After all, in this era of extreme tanking and trusting processes, Cashman's about to pull off a general manager's dream of rebuilding an old team and a dried-up system top to bottom while never dropping under .500, and without the aid of a top-15 draft pick.

The Rollins-Utley-Howard Phillies withered and died; Theo Epstein had to tear down the Cubs' mess to build a champion. Cashman's aging and expensive Yankee teams have continued to contend and even won a title amid his silent reboot. It may end up being the perfect rebuild, one so improbable that it's not being properly appreciated.

How in the world did Cashman do this in New York?

Lessons learned

Cashman worked under George Steinbrenner during the team's 1980s disaster. After Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990, they were finally able to hold onto their young players instead of trading them in short-sighted moves; then-GM Gene Michael and then-assistant GM Cashman used that time to develop a farm system, draft and sign the Core Four (five with Bernie Williams), and built the next dynasty. That young core won its first title in 1996 after veterans augmented the youngsters; Cashman ascended to GM in 1998, in time to oversee the three-peat.

Over the next decade Cashman threw money around at veterans, surprisingly grabbed A-Rod, and kept the dynasty alive with an aging and expensive core. Nobody cares about the future in Yankee Land: It's ring or bust, and Cashman's moves defined that Yankee Way.

Except that quick fixes aren't actually Cashman's style - and as he learned from Michael, you can rebuild the Yankees if you do it right, and do it quietly.

Behind the scenes

The quick-fix winter of 2008-09 didn't look like long-term planning. Signing A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixeira to fix a team that missed the playoffs cost Cashman draft picks - including one that turned into Mike Trout - but those men won the Yankees title No. 27. And in Yankee Land you make that trade every day.

As Cashman doled out the cash to veterans, he was quietly adding to a farm system already ranked 15th overall in 2009 by Baseball America. The quiet start to this actually came in the eighth round of the 2006 draft when he selected Dellin Betances; then, on July 2, 2009 - while headlines grumbled about Sabathia allowing six runs to the lowly Mariners at home - the next piece showed up when Gary Sanchez was given a $3-million bonus.

The Yankees stayed above .500 since 2009, but kept getting older and kept watching the A-Rod soap opera grow. Cashman contributed to this mess through some win-now moves (Jacoby Ellsbury, Masahiro Tanaka, Carlos Beltran, Andrew Miller, Brian McCann), while bad contracts (Teixeira, Sabathia, A-Rod) hampered him and the Core Four retired. Though he did spend, eyebrows were first raised when future Hall of Famer Robinson Cano walked for more money elsewhere; then again when he replaced Derek Jeter with the young and cheap Didi Gregorius instead of throwing money at free agent Hanley Ramirez. Even weirder was the winter of 2015, when he didn't sign one free agent after the team was shut out in the wild-card game. Everybody grumbled, even as his strange un-Yankee-like construction stayed above .500.

All this time, the likes of Sanchez, Luis Severino (2011 signee), Greg Bird (2010 draft), Tyler Austin (2011), and Aaron Judge (2013), among others, were being developed - but that didn't matter. Cashman's seat was warm, because the Yankee Way isn't to wait. After all, the Yankees' real farm system is the 29 other big-league rosters; kids they develop exist as trade bait, nothing more.

The genius of it all

When Hal Steinbrenner finally OK'd the tear-down last July, it was a surprisingly welcomed sight for many. Teixeira was retiring, A-Rod was finally going away, and the team would finally tank and get some high picks to re-stock the system, like in the early 1990s. The Chapman, Miller, and Beltran trades boosted the system and shed salary.

And therein lies the genius: By the time ownership grudgingly accepted it was time to sell and start fresh, Cashman had already finished his full-scale rebuild - and most of the kids were ready.

Sanchez came up in August and lit the world on fire. Judge joined him, as did Austin, and the post-deadline Yankees somehow stayed in the wild-card hunt until the final week. Bird missed the fun, but his 11 homers down the stretch in 2015 proved he's a big part of this. In the winter the team was handed to the youngsters, with the exceptions of a few hole-filling veterans, both old and new.

The end result: a young up-and-coming core surrounded by veterans filling key holes, with the ability to win quickly - much like in the mid-'90s, before the team spent like crazy. With an average age of 28.5, per Statista, the 2017 Yankees are younger than that 1996 championship group (29.7). Deadline acquisitions Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier will be the final young pieces, augmenting the group Cashman silently developed from the ground up.

This was the only way he could rebuild properly in New York.

In New York, you see, the "R" word is contraband. Tearing it all down like Epstein did in Chicago is not allowed; neither is carrying three Rule 5 picks on your roster in a transparent tanking attempt. No, in New York it must be done in a shroud of semi-secrecy, as Cashman has done here. He learned lessons watching '80s Steinbrenner up close, the '92 Mets debacle, and the Jets and Knicks becoming utter jokes through knee-jerk reactionary moves and meddling owners.

He wasn't about to let the Yankees fall into that New York trap as the Jeter era aged away for good. On the outside we watched money prop up a dying dynasty; away from the spotlight, Cashman was busy outsmarting everyone.

Early in 2017, it's paying off. The "Baby Bombers," without the injured Sanchez, have won eight of their last nine and may suddenly have a clear path to quick contention. There exists a possibility that if things break right, this young group - plus the ones still a half-year or so away - could own rings before Harper, Machado, and the rest of that 2018 free-agent class are ready to join them and take this to the next level.

If it all works out, Cashman's legacy would be engineering arguably the greatest rebuild in history. He's on track, at this moment, to rebuild an entire organization from top to bottom without one losing season. There are few sports executives who can say they've done that anywhere, let alone in New York - making it even more remarkable.

So take note, baseball. You can rebuild an old team whose window is shrinking without tanking. Heck, you can win while doing it. This is the manual, written and developed by Brian Cashman himself, and it should be applauded by even the most ardent Yankee haters.

Just, you know, think about keeping that Mike Trout pick next time.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)