Yankees April Approval Poll: Brian Cashman

01/05/2024 14:30

With his team locked in an early battle for first place, how would you rate Yankees general manager Brian Cashman?

The Yankees are currently locked in a four-game battle with the Orioles for early-season supremacy in the AL East. The Orioles taught the Bombers a bit of a lesson in the first two games of the series, beating their opponents with a far more fundamentally sound brand of baseball. Nonetheless, the Yankees' start to their 2024 campaign has been overwhelmingly positive, and with the calendar flipping a page into May, it's time to dust off our monthly Brian Cashman GM approval poll.

Before we analyze the team's performance in the first full month of the regular season, it might be helpful to track Cashman's approval rating among fans earlier this year. Our first poll of 2024 had Cashman's approval at a healthy 32 percent for the month of February. It was quite a boost relative to the ratings in the single-digits and teens from the 2023 All-Star break through the end of the calendar year, the fanbase optimistic following an offseason that saw the team add Juan Soto, Marcus Stroman, Alex Verdugo, and Trent Grisham. That rating jumped up even further, all the way to 53 percent for the month of March, undoubtedly propped up by the Yankees sweeping the Astros in four games on Opening Day weekend.

As for April, I have just two words: Juan Soto. As much hype as there was surrounding the generational hitter's move to the Bronx, even those sky-high expectations have been blown out of the water. Entering play Tuesday, Soto was first in MLB with 24 walks, third by fWAR (1.9) and sixth in wRC+ (183), all of which should go up following his home run, single, and walk in last night's loss.

However, he is not the only new Yankee to exceed expectations. It was thought that the addition of Alex Verdugo would raise the floor of the outfield production to around league-average level. Instead, Verdugo is the team's second-best hitter, with a 133 wRC+ and the lowest strikeout rate (8.3-percent) of any qualified hitter in MLB. Throw on top stellar defense in left and he is having a quietly elite start to the season that not many could have seen coming.

The most encouraging development has been Carlos Rodón's return to form after his nightmare debut season, the lefty leveraging an expanded arsenal to go 2-1 with a 2.48 ERA across his first six starts. Nestor Cortes looks fully recovered from the shoulder injury that limited him to 63.1 ineffective innings in 2023, the lefty posting a 3.86 ERA and 3.51 FIP in seven starts. Marcus Stroman has hit a slight home run problem of late but has largely performed as advertised, with a 3.69 ERA and AL-leading 58-percent groundball rate in six starts. Even Clarke Schmidt has been impressive, dropping his ERA from 4.64 to 3.19 thanks to an uptick in the strikeout department.

The season almost derailed before it even began, reigning AL Cy Young Gerrit Cole getting shutdown during spring with nerve inflammation in his right elbow. DJ LeMahieu went down not long after with a non-displaced fracture after fouling a ball off his right foot. Neither player has seen MLB action thus far and it's possible that both are out until June at the earliest.

Their absences opened up opportunities for some of the Yankees' younger players, and they've grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Anthony Volpe has firmly locked down the leadoff spot that would have belonged to LeMahieu, taking a massive step in his development in his sophomore year. He focused on flattening his bat path using an opposite-field approach over the offseason and the work is paying off, Volpe's strikeout rate dropping from 27.8-percent to 19.7-percent, on-base percentage rising from .283 to .362, whiff rate dropping from 28.1-percent to 16.7-percent, and wRC+ rising from 84 to 127, all of which has produced 1.5 fWAR that's tied for fifth among qualified shortstops.

Oswaldo Cabrera has been deputizing at the hot corner in LeMahieu's stead and has raised his wRC+ from 60 in 2023 to 100 in 2024. The value of having simply league-average offense from non-premium players cannot be overstated, and Cabrera has even come through with some game-turning hits in the opening weeks. Cole's absence bumped the four rotation members behind him up a spot, allowing Luis Gil to win the fifth starter job out of spring. He's certainly still a work in progress with scarce control of his secondary offerings and a 17.6-percent walk rate, but his four-seam fastball is unquestionably elite and his 4.01 ERA and 32.4-percent strikeout rate deserve recognition.

That brings us to the two team leaders we have not yet discussed: Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo. A .207/.340/.414 triple slash line and 119 wRC+ is not remotely close to good enough from the Yankee captain, nor was an 81 wRC+ in Rizzo's first 21 games. One wonders how good the Yankees' record could be if both sluggers hadn't been ice-cold through the first three weeks of the season, but we can at least take encouragement that both have shown signs of heating up of late. Judge is batting .290 with three home runs and a 188 wRC+ since the start of the Oakland series while Rizzo just won AL Player of the Week honors after launching his 300th career home run as part of an eight-game hot stretch that saw him bat .400 with four home runs and a 271 wRC+.

Of course, the first month of the season has not been flawless, and there are a handful of wrinkles the team has to iron out as the year progresses. Gleyber Torres has been mired in one of the worst slumps of his career, slugging .263 with a 72 wRC+, and has logged the second-most plate appearances in the league without hitting a home run behind only Luis Arraez. The bullpen has been middling at best but really struggles in the swing-and-miss department, with the fourth-worst strikeout rate and seventh-worst whiff rate of any relief unit. Finally, and perhaps most concerning, the team has already been shutout five times — second-most in the majors behind only the six-win White Sox. They are already halfway to their total for all of 2023 and it is imperative that the team figures out how to avoid this tendency toward lineup-wide capitulation in one out of every six games.

That brings us to today's task. Do you approve of the job Brian Cashman has done through the end of April, with a 19-12 record and one game out of first? The polarizing GM certainly elicits stronger feelings than can be captured in a one-word response — you may feel a question such as the one being posed requires more nuance, greater elaboration, or a wider selection of options than just a "yes" or a "no," however for the sake of this exercise, a binary question works best.

Please vote in the poll below and let us know! We'll revisit the results in a month.