Steinbrenner apologizes, says Cashman will return as GM

While New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner left little doubt that general manager Brian Cashman will return after this season, his afternoon radio interview with Michael Kay left the door wide open to changes on the Yankees coaching staff.

"The hitting coach is responsible for the hitters, the pitching coach is responsible for the pitchers, and we've got an infield coach responsible for defense and fielding," Steinbrenner said on "The Michael Kay Show," which is simulcast by the YES Network and ESPN New York radio. "That comes with any position in life. You are liable for what goes on. We have not made any decisions yet as to what we're going to do with any of the coaches. That will be the first step to look at the manager and the coaches as we do every single year."

Does he feel that something has to change given what's happened the past two years?

"I don't have an answer to that because I don't make rash decisions," Steinbrenner said. "I want to talk to all my people, including having long discussions with Cashman and his people and really get into, could anything have been different or did these guys just have a down year, these three or four guys? But, rest assured, we're going to get to the bottom of it. And if I do deem that somebody is liable, or if I do deem that somebody is responsible, that things could have been better, I will act."

Obviously Steinbrenner doesn't have the bluster of his father, but by Hal's standards, his words seemed like a kind of warning that changes could come in the next few days and weeks.

"I don't think it's a news flash that I'm different from George in a lot of ways," Steinbrenner said. "He was better at many things than me, without a doubt, but I do tend to be a little less rash when I comes to firing people. I want to make sure that what went wrong was wrong for a reason. It was wrong because of that one individual or two individuals or whatever. I will get through that process before I do anything like that as opposed to any kind of knee-jerk reaction."

A few other topics that were discussed:

On whether the Yankees considered simply releasing Alex Rodriguez: "I'm not a lawyer, so (I'm not going) to get into what can be done to a contract or not. But like I said, when he's healthy, he's an asset. We need those kind of assets. We need the hitting. … If he's healthy, he's going to be an asset to the team, and I would never not want that."

On whether the Yankees will be aggressive this winter: "I've been a little trade averse as far as getting rid of younger kids as you saw last year, but we're going to have to analyze. We know we need a shortstop, of course. I think with (Ivan) Nova coming back probably not until May, I think we need a starting pitcher. And then we're going to have to go from there. As we do, every offseason, we're going to look at everybody."

On Mark Teixeira admitting he can't play as often as he used to: "Every player is different. He obviously had a pretty major surgery. He's going to have his feelings. We try to address a player's feelings, but sometimes we feel like we need that player, so we're going to be a little bit more forceful, if you will, in trying to get that player to play. But we were in a situation this year where things were tough, and we needed everybody to contribute as much as possible, but we certainly don't want to hurt anybody either. We need to continue to listen to Mark and be cognizant of what he's going through."

On Masahiro Tanaka's elbow: "We knew going into this, everybody did, that he pitched a lot of pitches in Japan. Pitchers that pitch that amount of pitches and that amount of innings, I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure there's a tendency to have problems more so than somebody who hasn't. It's something we're always going to be concerned about, but the fact he got through this entire rehab and now has played in two major-league games and has zero pain, that's a good sign. But we'll just have to see."

On whether he regrets going over the $189 million threshold: "The decision to go over 189 was for one player and that was Tanaka, and I have no regrets about that because he's going to be everything that we saw in the first three months of the season. He's going to be great."

On whether he regrets not signing Robinson Cano: "Robbie Cano was a great player. We made what we thought was a very legitimate, good offer. And we just weren't even in the same ballpark. That is what it is. He's a great player. Any team would miss him to a certain extent, without a doubt, but, again, the guys we brought in were much better than they played and that's going to be different next year."

Steinbrenner's message to Yankees fans: "I apologize. We did not do the job this year. We know what you expect of us, and we expect the same thing of ourselves, and we certainly did what we thought we could do in the offseason to field a pretty good team come April 1, but it didn't work out for reasons we've just discussed. And we're going to get right back to work."

Jennings writes for the (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News, a Gannett property