I understand all the screaming for Brian Cashman to be fired. A strong case could now be made that his baseball operations department has gone stale, lost its feel and it is time after a quarter-of-a-century in charge to change the top voice and the direction.

But this is not open for a public vote. This is a dictatorship, where the only decisionmaker who matters on this issue is Hal Steinbrenner. And Steinbrenner is more likely to participate in the Y-M-C-A after the top of sixth inning while sprucing up the Yankee Stadium infield than fire his current general manager.

So, I think a bigger question needs to be asked than whether Cashman is going to be axed or not, though I get, in particular, the social media firestorm to fire Cashman will not cease any time soon. It might be cathartic, but it will be futile unless perhaps the Yankees finish the season on a 5-41 run and then even Steinbrenner feels he has no other alternative.

Thus, for those bigger questions, I will begin here: was Cashman doing public spin Wednesday in a press conference before his team tried to end a nine-game losing streak or is he really about to initiate a harsh self-examination of every facet of this organization and provide a blueprint for the Yankees to rebound from their worst season since 1992 — and fast?

The most revealing moment of Cashman’s 22 minutes addressing reporters came when he said, “We’ve invited a lot of scrutiny, a lot of questions, some of them will be legitimate, some of it will be bull[bleep], but we have got to be professional and deal with all of it and try to sift through what’s real and what’s fake.”

What does Cashman find legitimate? What does he find bull(bleep)? My strong suspicion is it will not match the views of his harshest critics. Namely, he is not about to eradicate his analytics department. He is not about to recommend firing Aaron Boone unless Steinbrenner demands a sacrificial lamb. He is not about to look in the mirror and concede that the Yankees have fallen hopelessly behind in too many areas.

Cashman is proud. He mentioned he has a history of fixing the team since he became GM in 1998. In 2016, for example, the Yankees were trade-deadline sellers for the only time during Steinbrenner ownership. The following year — in what was supposed to be a rebuild — they went to ALCS Game 7.

He noted that the team played in the ALCS last year — not in, say, a time when Joe DiMaggio was still on the roster. He exclaimed that no one inside or outside the organization saw this kind of tumble this season, suggesting a confluence of negative results hard to predict or rectify with the season underway.

Got it. Cashman has overseen a successful operation for a long time. The Yankees made the playoffs in 21 of his first 25 years as GM and spent 16 total games in that time mathematically eliminated. I don’t care what your payroll is or what the social media wave is — that is remarkable. The ever-loyal White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf finally got around Tuesday to dismissing Kenny Williams, the top baseball voice since 2001, and Rick Hahn, the GM since 2013. And those guys have been mainly the anti-Cashmans, piloting dysfunction and disappointment year after year.

Steinbrenner is loyal to Cashman and their shared history. My belief is that Steinbrenner will look at this like any company and see an employee he likes having a bad year after 25 very good ones (in Steinbrenner’s view, not those of the fans) and give Cashman a chance to fix what has broken under his watch. I would think the leash truly doesn’t become short unless the awful of 2023 is followed by the woeful of 2024.

So this returns us to what is legitimate and what is bull? And to that end, Steinbrenner is going to have to ask hard questions and hold Cashman to hard answers that don’t just blame misfortune or whatever the GM views as bull. This can’t just be mild touch-ups, promises of better injury results next year and see everyone in Tampa for pitchers and catchers come February.

Just a sampling of what Steinbrenner must seek more than superficial answers for: Why has the team not uncovered more average and better players in the draft? Why have there been no sustained stars signed internationally? Is this about the people picking the amateurs or those developing them once they are Yankees — or both? Why have so many players who had strong initial moments with the Yankees gone bad — and why was that not internally diagnosed in time to trade them before the entire industry knew they had no value? Why has the team’s trading record become so poor? Why have injuries remained so numerous? Why has the team not excelled at the nuances of baseball? Why has the team locked so in on righty hitting, power bats and power arms as to make it difficult to change course if the flight of the ball and/or the rules changed?

This is not a small list — and it is not a full one.

“We are what our record says we are,” Cashman said. “We’re certainly not proud of it. It’s been a disaster of a season. We’re embarrassed by it.”

It has been humiliating considering the payroll, the famous names and the history. A true autopsy must be undertaken to determine the cause of death of competence. Cashman will offer what is legitimate and what is bull — but Steinbrenner must make sure it is a brutal self-examination that leads to real alterations.