How Do I Get Damon Oppenheimer's Job Security?

(Do you even know how to read that thing, dude?  Courtesy of The NY Daily News)

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

Because if I sucked at my job as much as he's sucked at his and had been sucking at it for as long as he has been, my employer would have axed me years ago.  They especially would have done it if I were in his situation where my bosses were strongly hinting at making changes in my department, but somehow Oppenheimer survived last week's organizational meetings and will continue on as amateur scouting director next year. Real quickly, here's a list of the Yankees' 1st round draft picks since Oppenheimer took that position:

• 2006- Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain
• 2007- Andrew Brackman
• 2008- Gerrit Cole, Jeremy Bleich
• 2009- Slade Heathcott
• 2010- Cito Culver
• 2011- Dante Bichette Jr.
• 2012- Ty Hensley
• 2013- Eric Jagielo, Ian Clarkin, Aaron Judge

From that group, only 2 3 players (forgot about Brackman) took the field as Yankees and neither of them will be with the organization next year, 2 of them either never signed or flamed out before they could even do anything for the organization, and the rest have never played a game above the Double-A level.
Any way you slice it, those are piss poor 1st round results and apparently the Yankees' version of holding somebody accountable for that is to continue to pay Oppenheimer to do that job for another year.

Don't worry though.  According to Mark Feinsand, there will be "other changes" coming in the baseball operations group.  Based on what we've seen so far, I'd expect those changes to be a firing of a low level scout or 2 and maybe one of the team's clubhouse attendants.  Because it's obvious that nobody at the top is at fault for the team's present situation.

I really don't know what the rationale is for this decision and I'm not sure I really want to know.  The only thing I can come up with is maybe Hal and Cash want to give Hensley and the trio of 2013 1st rounders a full season to show what they can do and show that Oppenheimer got something right.  That's the only thing that makes any sense, but even then it's a questionable decision at best.  Not wanting to rebuild is one thing.  Maintaining a status quo that has been proven to be ineffective is quite another and not something that predicts future success for the Yankees.