THE YANKEES? DUMP CASHMAN AND BOONE AS WE ADORE THE MARINERS, ORIOLES

The demise of the Yankees has happened during the 14 years since they last won a World Series, which means they should find new management while letting us appreciate newer postseason teams

     The star was “hotter than the sun,” raved Jerry Dipoto, who rarely is mentioned as baseball operations president of the Seattle Mariners. Not until last autumn did we mention his ballclub as part of the American sports landscape, having finally broken a 21-year postseason drought. Who are better lately than Julio Rodriguez, who was called “phenomenal” by Dipoto, and the frickin’ Mariners?

     They just won 21 of 26 games and, with six at home in the next week against the Class AAA Royals and sinning Athletics, they are back in the playoffs if they hold on the next month. Know the real beauty here? Well, along with announcer Kevin Brown saying the Orioles have sucked in Seattle forevermore — which could get him sort-of fired again — the Mariners reaching the American League championship series would be better than the top three of the major-league spending pool.

     The New York Mets, who have all-time-high expenditures of $400 million after a trade-deadline fire sale, are 10 games under .500. The San Diego Padres, looking at $300 million, remain six under even-steven. And the New York Yankees, who just finished a nine-game losing streak, have their own monstrous tax bill coming.

     Together, they are 180-202.

     The Mariners, at No. 18, are 71-56. The Orioles, at No. 29, are 79-48 with the second-best record in the sport. And if the No. 19-rated Milwaukee Brewers win the National League and play Seattle, we could have a World Series featuring two teams that never have won it all.

     Even if the season doesn’t end that way — Atlanta still makes the most sense — it leads to a wonderful adulation that the Yankees should stop using gaslighting as a means of life. They’ve acted this way for decades since winning their 20th championship in 1962, but since 2000, they’ve won one just once. Considering 14 years have passed since then and many more could be coming, forget the alarms about the Mets’ free-flowing freedom under Steve Cohen and the Padres’ sudden rages around Peter Seidler. We should be asking how the Yankees, who have spent and tried to maintain the highest crust, continue to employ Brian Cashman as their general manager and Aaron Boone as their manager.

     George Steinbrenner would have fired both people many years before, with combustion beside each. The Yankees won their 27th title the previous October before he died in 2010, and under son Hal, nothing has happened since. These are not the famed maulers of Broadway. Stars don’t care much about playing there, including Aaron Judge, who almost headed to San Diego or San Francisco before staying put after his 62nd home-run season. It’s just another cold-ass place to play, where Gerrit Cole must wonder why he didn’t stay in Houston. It’s possible we won’t see them win for a while in a league run by younger and wiser.

     So why keep Cashman, who was running the Yankees when George was alive and well 25 years ago? Everything else is gone. Boone hasn’t worked out as field manager, nor did Joe Girardi after his last claim as titlist. You’re just going to maintain Cashman because he won in 1998-2000 and 2009? Next year is 2024. His most recent deals haven’t worked — Giancarlo Stanton has gotten old and hurt while the recent likes of Luis Severino, Carlos Rodon, Josh Donaldson, Joey Gallo, Aaron Hicks and Frankie Montas have been abysmal. Isn’t it time for Steinbrenner — who said last March, “Do I think we’re good enough to win a championship now? Yes,” — to take charge when the GM, wearing all sorts of weird leather on his wrist, all but asks out?

     “It's been a disaster this season. Yes, definitely a shock," Cashman said the other night in a 22-minute news conference. "We're embarrassed by it. And that's representative from every aspect of this franchise from top to bottom. And that includes our players too. They care. They're fighting. I know it doesn't look like that, but I would say if you try to put yourself in their position, I don't think anyone wants to go out in front of 40,000 people and lay an egg, whether it's individually or collectively as a team, because then what comes with that is pretty horrific.”

     Horrific isn’t a word used by someone on the job a quarter-century. With one more guaranteed season, Cashman doesn’t appear to think the current roster of Judge and Cole will pass a best-ever version of the AL East. Imagine dealing with Tampa Bay, which keeps winning without the administrative leave of shortstop Wander Franco, along with Baltimore, Boston and Toronto. He knows what might be next.

     “I think we’re all going to be evaluated, including myself,” he said.

     He’s the one who brought in Boone, who turned out to be an exaggerated cartoon in the way he’s run out of games by umpires. Earlier this month, he was ejected for the sixth time and 32nd in his career. He should be looking for a gig at ESPN, from where he emerged in 2018 without returning to a Series. Of Steinbrenner, he said, “He's certainly frustrated, obviously, as we all are. I think we're all in this together and share that kind of same feeling. So I don't think he's necessarily pointedly angry at me in these meetings.”

     In the first week of October, he will be. George fired 21 managers between 1973 and 2008. It’s time for Hal’s second, along with a new GM who doesn’t use “disaster” and “embarrassment” in the same sentence.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.