http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/sports/baseball/yankees-give-brian-cashman-a-new-deal-but-dismiss-kevin-long.html 2014-10-10 22:58:52 Yankees Give Brian Cashman a New Deal but Dismiss Kevin Long Cashman, the team’s general manager since 1998, received a three-year contract on Friday. The coaches Kevin Long and Mick Kelleher were fired. === BALTIMORE — For some, the timing looked particularly bad. The Cashman has been the team’s general manager since 1998, a period of record success, but could this have been the moment for a change? Some Yankees fans thought so, but Hal Steinbrenner did not. Steinbrenner, the managing general partner of the Yankees, gave Cashman a new three-year contract to continue as vice president of baseball operations and general manager, a decision that was not surprising. The Yankees announced the deal Friday, but did not reveal the terms. But the Yankees did make some changes, firing their hitting coach, Kevin Long, and first-base coach, Mick Kelleher. Cashman said Friday that he did not yet have their replacements. In Cashman’s tenure, the Yankees have won four World Series titles and six American League pennants, and his winning percentage of .594 is the highest of any general manager with at least five seasons of experience since 1950. It is the best team winning percentage in the major leagues since 1998. But Cashman, 47, has come under pressure from critics in the last couple of years as the team, with a perennially high payroll, has failed to reach the playoffs. The pressure increased this year when the Yankees committed almost half a billion dollars to sign players like Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran. The latter three were position players, but the Yankees’ offense still faltered. The Yankees scored only 633 runs, 13th in the 15-team American League, and Steinbrenner recently said that he took equal responsibility for approving all of the big contracts. Some have claimed that Steinbrenner is not as proactive as his father, George Steinbrenner, who had a reputation for firing employees at the first sign of trouble. But even George Steinbrenner kept Cashman as general manager from Feb. 3, 1998, when he promoted him, until he died in 2010, a remarkably long time for Steinbrenner to keep someone in that position. But the Steinbrenner family holds Cashman in great esteem, and Hal continued to show the family’s faith by rewarding Cashman with another three years with the mission to return the Yankees to the postseason.