Now Trending: Cashman's Doval Do-Over
Yankees GM Brian Cashman traded away last year's big bullpen addition for pennies on the dollar, and the internet is treating it as Exhibit A in his flawed roster-building
What's trending is a very specific kind of baseball schadenfreude: Yankees fans watching general manager Brian Cashman trade relief pitcher Camilo Doval to the Pittsburgh Pirates for two low-level prospects, roughly a year after trading four prospects to acquire him in the first place. One viral joke imagines Cashman offering the Pirates idk man maybe like two prospects in exchange, and it's been liked nearly 3,000 times, which tells you this isn't really about Doval. It's about a fanbase that thinks it knows exactly how Cashman operates, and feels validated every time he proves it.
The underlying facts: the New York Yankees acquired RHP Camilo Doval from the San Francisco Giants in exchange for minor leaguers C Jesús Rodríguez, RHP Trystan Vrieling, INF Parks Harber and LHP Carlos de la Rosa at last year's trade deadline, when Doval was a 2023 All-Star with a strong track record in San Francisco. It didn't work out. Doval posted a 4.82 ERA in 22 games with the Yankees to close out the 2025 season, recording 1 save that year, then pitched 39 2/3 innings this season in 44 games but again struggled to a tune of a 4.54 ERA before being dealt for the second time in his career. This week, the Yankees acquired minor leaguers Omar Alfonzo and Luis Cruz in exchange for the right-handed reliever, with Cashman even sweetening the pot by sending roughly $1.2 million to offset the remaining $2 million on Doval's contract this season.
What turned this into the argument of the day is the math. Fans are doing the simple subtraction: four well-regarded prospects out, one struggling reliever in, two lesser prospects out the other side, and Cashman writing a check to make the deal happen at all. One widely shared tweet quipped that this is peak Yankees efficiency, and CBS Sports' own trade grade conceded getting anything for Doval qualifies as a good trade for the Yankees — which is less a compliment than an admission of how far the asset had fallen.
The sides here aren't conspiratorial, just tribal. Cashman's defenders point out he protected the crown jewels of the farm system; a team analysis noted Cashman, in completing all those deals, held on to his top five prospects, including organizational No. 1 George Lombard Jr. and red-hot slugger Spencer Jones, and that the return wasn't nothing — Alfonzo is the Pirates' No. 17-ranked prospect and Cruz profiles as a long-term project, with SI's trade grade calling the return a solid return for Cashman, especially given how far Doval's value has fallen. Critics counter that this is simply who Cashman is: a GM who trades quantity for names, then quietly eats the loss a year later, and several of the angriest replies frame it as proof he's overstayed his 25-plus years running the front office, with one blunt reply on the timeline crediting Cashman's survival to a weak division rather than results.
In my opinion, none of this requires a grand theory about Cashman being either a genius or an idiot — both extremes flatter the poster more than they describe the guy. Front offices misjudge relievers on razor-thin margins all the time; the same fastball that made Doval an All-Star in San Francisco just didn't play the same in the Bronx, and CBS Sports' own analytics suggested Doval is still slinging 101 mph cutters and getting ground balls at an elite clip, with an expected ERA that suggests he's not a lost cause. What's actually worth your attention isn't the meme, it's the pattern: a 25-year tenure that keeps producing short-term bandaid fixes instead of sustained player development, and a $300+ million payroll that doesn't ever reflect the talent on the field. Yankee fans should rightly be growing tired of this routine. Time for a change.
