Brian Cashman confirmed Tuesday that Pat Murphy called to apologize for criticizing the 2023 Yankees as a team with a selfish culture, and the Yankees GM said the gesture meant a lot to him. That's the whole transaction on the surface. Underneath it is a small, honest story about two baseball lifers settling an old score the right way, with a phone call instead of a press conference.
Murphy's original comments targeted New York's 2023 season, the one that ended 82-80 and out of the playoffs, a year that got picked apart publicly for its clubhouse culture more than any Yankees team in recent memory. Murphy, never shy with an opinion, put a label on it. Cashman, never shy about defending his own, remembered it. Three years is a long time to carry a line like that, and longer still to decide it's worth walking back.
why did pat murphy apologize to brian cashman
The timing says something. Murphy didn't make this call during a pennant race or a Yankees losing streak, when an apology might look like strategy. He made it after becoming the first manager in National League history to win Manager of the Year three seasons running, an honor that landed the same week as this story. That's a man secure enough in his own standing to clean up an old mess without needing anything from it.
Cashman, for his part, didn't need to accept it publicly either. GMs bury plenty of slights and let them calcify into real grudges, the kind that show up later in trade calls that never get returned or free agent meetings that mysteriously don't happen. Cashman chose the other road here, and said so on the record. That's not nothing in an industry built on long memories.
what pat murphy's three-peat means for the brewers
The award itself is worth sitting with. Three straight NL Manager of the Year honors is uncharted ground, a run that puts Murphy in rarefied company regardless of what happens next in Milwaukee. The Brewers have built a reputation as an organization that outperforms its outside expectations year after year, and the man running the dugout keeps getting the formal credit for it alongside a roster that keeps delivering the substance.
For the Yankees, this is a quieter offseason story, a loose thread tied off rather than a front-page item. New York is still working through its own roster questions heading into the winter, but a three-year-old sideline comment finally getting put to bed is the kind of small housekeeping that lets an organization focus on the business actually in front of it.
From the Almanac
checked the almanac: no manager in National League history had won the award three years running before murphy did it this week, so whatever friction came with the comments, the man making them earned the right to be heard out.
What I'm watching next is simpler than the apology itself: whether this thaw extends beyond a phone call, whether Cashman and Murphy's organizations find themselves doing actual baseball business together down the line, a trade call or a free agent crossing paths, now that the air is clear.
