brian cashman yankees
Kim Klement | USA TODAY Sports

Was starting pitcher Frankie Montas healthy or not when the Yankees acquired him at the trade deadline last summer? The hurler recently said he wasn’t. General manager Brian Cashman responded by saying all signs pointed to him being healthy.

Then, of course, the poor performance began. That was followed by a stint on the injured list before undergoing surgery in February. The trade has obviously been a bust for the Yankees. It already looked terrible at the conclusion of 2022. But now that Montas’ walk year will be abbreviated, it looks even worse.

Cashman knows this. After all, it doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to look at the right-hander’s stats (6.35 ERA, 1.54 WHIP in 39.2 innings) and come to that conclusion.

Let’s take a quick run down memory lane to revisit the public comments made about this topic, shall we? Then, we’ll put the most recent one in bold at the end.

Here are Montas’ original comments:

A few days later, Cashman responded to them publicly in a predictable manner:

I know [Wednesday] he said clearly he was hurt, but I think in terms of context, it’s easy for him to say that now, but when we got him, he said he felt great, he was feeling 100 percent and ready to go. I feel like he was genuine and sincere. So you go through the medical deep dive that you can do in-season.

You deal with the player when you get him and how he’s feeling. Everything came back good and aces, and without concern. But it didn’t play out that way.

And last, but most certainly not least, here’s what Cashman just said to Ian O’Connor of the New York Post:

You can’t sugarcoat it —the Montas trade didn’t work out. We didn’t get a healthy pitcher, and that’s ultimately my responsibility.

As I said in the headline, let’s overreact to this comment!

Cash has been with the Yankees in some capacity for nearly three decades. He knows what the atmosphere/pressure is like in New York. He also knows that anything he says can take on a life of its own (*takes a bow*). That’s why what he said here was interesting to me.

About two weeks ago, he said the Yankees did their due diligence from a medical standpoint. And since Montas didn’t complain about any ailments, what else is New York supposed to do, right? But now that he said what’s bolded above, it can certainly create doubt for some.

Did the Yankees know Montas was potentially damaged goods? If so, how serious was it? He also could be saying the Yankees didn’t get a healthy pitcher with the benefit of hindsight. He alluded that Montas probably did that himself with his original comments.

Either way, he probably should’ve chosen his words a little better. The last thing he needs is stuff like this — the opportunity for others to read into it and potentially take what he said the wrong way.

Matt Musico can be reached at [email protected] and you can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.

Matt Musico is an editor for ESNY. He’s been writing about baseball and the Mets for the past decade. His work has been featured on numberFire, MetsMerized Online, Bleacher Report, and Yahoo! Sports.