The Yankees are searching for a new manager, and the club is "not only making little effort to hide candidates but also crowdsourcing the vetting process by parading them in front of the news media," according to Billy Witz of the N.Y. TIMES. So far, each of the five people the Yankees have interviewed has been "placed on a conference call with the news organizations that regularly cover the team." Yankees Senior VP & GM Brian Cashman said that there were "two purposes for the highly unusual decision to publicize the list of candidates." First, the news media may "dig up information on a candidate that the Yankees’ own background search has not." The other benefit is to "observe how the candidates might handle questions from the news media -- a significant and often stressful part of a Yankees manager’s duties." Cashman said, "You’re an extension of detective work. As well as lights, camera, action and see how people react, whether you want to call it mild questioning, tough questioning." Nationals President of Baseball Operations & GM Mike Rizzo said, "I see the value, especially in an atypical market like New York. But I think we make our best decisions when it’s not nationally known what we’re trying to do." Astros GM Jeff Luhnow added what the Yankees were doing would provide real-time feedback from fans but is a "double-edged sword because then you can’t keep who you’re interviewing a secret.” Witz writes the teleconferences the Yankees are conducting are "hardly contentious" as the club limits the questions to "one per entity, undercutting any chance for some back and forth" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/21).
