In the May issue of Men’s Journal, Rolling Stone political writer Matt Taibbi makes the case against the Yankee GM.

Brian Cashman has kept his job in baseball over the years because he is masterfully good at just one particular thing: choosing sides in exploding Yankee scandals.

… Most Yankee fans believe Cashman didn’t really want to fire the revered Joe Torre and didn’t really want to sign Japanese special-needs student Kei Igawa and didn’t really want to acquire wall-puncher Kevin Brown or anger addict Randy Johnson or Jaret Wright or José Contreras or Jason Giambi or any of the other overpriced, underperforming free agents who soiled the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium over Cashman’s tenure. The story we’re supposed to buy is that Cashman deep down inside is really a Theo Epstein–style GM who values internal player development and homegrown pitching….

I’m not really a fan of Taibbi, who seems to believe that just because you can say “fuck” in Rolling Stone then, by all means, you should do so as often as possible, apparently not realizing that the impact of the word “fuck” diminishes every time you say “fuck.” (See?)

But he does have one point here that seems to me worth considering: Cashman has been consistently out-GMed by Theo Epstein. Year after year Epstein seems to find great new ballplayers whom he doesn’t have to pay a ton of money, while for the Yankees, it’s really just Joba Chamberlain and Robinson Cano. Not that those guys aren’t terrific, but….

The question is whether that’s Epstein’s fault or has more to do with the nuttiness of the Steinbrenners. True Yankee fans assume that just surviving in a Steinbrenner-run organization requires massive intelligence and enormous political skill, so we assume that Cashman must be really smart. But maybe he has to spend all his time dealing with the Steinbrenners?