It’s not my team. I don’t own it. They do. I’m a big boy. . . . In any job you better be prepared for every decision to not go your way. That’s part of being an employee. There were internal debates and discussions on it and disagreements in terms of how you should proceed, and ultimately Hal’s in charge of making the final call in what he feels is the best direction at that time frame. He made that call. This is Hal Steinbrenner’s and his family’s franchise. It’s not mine and it’s never been, obviously.

I’m in charge of making recommendations, and there’s a chain of command that certainly was followed. But this is not something that was done without me being aware of it. I had my say.

– Brian Cashman, on the Rafael Soriano signing.

Beyond the obvious comparison to be made with the Mets — with all the hand-wringing over meddling ownership — this is just straight-up weird.

I’ve certainly heard it suggested before that a team’s owner has overruled the GM in contract negotiations (Vernon Wells in Toronto and Eric Byrnes in Arizona come to mind), but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a GM explicitly say he didn’t advocate a deal.

Maybe Cashman’s just being completely forthright here, since he does have a habit of letting certain would-be private details spill out into the press. But I wonder why he’d be so eager to distance himself from the contract, even if it is one that would be irresponsible if signed by any of the 29 teams with finite resources.

If I resist speculating about the Mets’ internal politics without concrete evidence, I should extend the Yankees the same courtesy. But certainly this suggests that Cashman is not operating with the autonomy I previously assumed he had been since George Steinbrenner’s health started failing.