MLB

Yankees GM blames Torre for overusing relievers

Brian Cashman isn’t looking for a fight, but he also is not willing to back down — and won’t take the blame for perceived overuse of Yankees pitchers.

Cashman is adamant the Mets abused Pedro Feliciano across his three years in Queens, when the left-handed reliever led the majors in appearances.

And though the Yankees general manager isn’t looking to pick a fight with the Mets, Cashman yesterday reacted harshly to being labeled a hypocrite because he was running the Yankees in 2006 and 2007, when Scott Proctor and Ron Villone combined for 242 appearances for Joe Torre and pitching coach Ron Guidry.

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“If you get Joe Torre on the phone, you will know I am not a hypocrite,” Cashman said before last night’s game against the Orioles. “I dealt with our pitching coach and I dealt with our manager. You can’t put your assets in jeopardy. You can’t overuse them or you lose them.”

Cashman said that when Proctor and Villone were being trotted out so often, he talked to all parties involved.

“We had guys that got overused, yeah, and I went proactive and failed in trying to stop it,” Cashman said. “I went every which way to the player, to the manager, to the pitching coach, to the agent. I remember telling Proctor, ‘Dude, you haven’t made money yet. You’re hurting your career while you’re helping us.’ He told me, ‘I’m never going to tell him no. If he needs me I’m going to be there for him.’ ”

Cashman said he didn’t make more of it at the time because Proctor was an asset.

“I would have had a Joe Torre issue, a Proctor issue, front page, back page,” Cashman said.

“We had an intervention with Joe and his coaches and it didn’t go well,” Cashman said. “The player is never going to say no, so you pay people who know the answer, the manager and the pitching coach.”

Messages left for Torre by The Post weren’t returned.

Cashman admitted there were questions about Feliciano.

“When we signed him there was a known risk, but he didn’t have any issues, we went through all the medical reports from the Mets,” Cashman said. “We don’t believe he had a capsule tear when we signed him.”

The mistakes made with Feliciano are a learning experience, Cashman said.

“You live and you learn from everything you do,” he said. “All I can tell you is that I believe I’m better than what I do today because of my mistakes in the past. I’ll learn from this too.”

george.king@nypost.com