Hal Steinbrenner has handed Brian Cashman another contract and the Yankees’ players the bill for October. An early playoff exit required an explanation. The owner supplied one that came with job security for the general manager.

Cashman has held the post since 1998. That is enough continuity to make a disappointing season feel like a temporary interruption in the general manager’s employment and a much more consequential interruption in somebody else’s.

Players have to perform. A general manager also chooses the players. Steinbrenner’s decision preserves the man assembling the roster while locating the failure among the men assembled. Cashman gets to help decide which of the people blamed come back.

Across baseball, the Dodgers received a more tangible kind of reassurance. Shohei Ohtani needs no surgery for the ailments he managed this past season, according to baseball operations president Andrew Friedman. Our October 4 filing had Ohtani managing a bad knee and biceps. That makes Wednesday’s medical update meaningful relief for a player whose availability changes what Los Angeles can put on the field.

The Yankees have delivered their own clean bill of health, addressed to the front office.

Their offseason now belongs to a retained general manager evaluating players his owner has publicly blamed. Cashman will help write the next roster. The clubhouse will wait to discover whose name disappears.