Posted on 10/29/2007 12:50:35 PM PDT by gridlock
The Yankees have settled on a choice for Joe Torre’s successor as the manager, and it is Joe Girardi, the former manager of the Florida Marlins who won three titles as a catcher for the Yankees in the 1990s. Girardi was selected over Don Mattingly and Tony Peña, who were members of Torre’s last coaching staff with the Yankees.
“The Yankees have expressed interest in Joe becoming manager,” Girardi’s agent, Steve Mandel, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We’ve decided to have discussions with them and we’re moving forward. No timetable has been set, but it’s a process we’re letting take place.”
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They made the right call here. Girardi is just what the team needs.
The Yanks are in for a rough go for a season or two. A-Rod isn’t a player that is easily replaced. Without Clemens, A-Rod, Torre, Mattingly, and possibly Rivera, Posada and Pettitte ... it could be a rough year.
H
Another interesting side to this is that Mattingly apparently won't come back as a coach after interviewing for the manager's job.
Sorry, Mattingly... Nobody gets to Skipper the New York Yankees just because it is their turn. The Yankees have to do what is best for the team, even if that means saying "no" to Donnie Baseball.
It is a fine balancing act. On the one hand you have to so a certain amount of loyalty, even if you are the New York Yankees. On the other hand, losing out of loyalty to one man is not really an option.
Given the Yankee's recent impatience at the plate and swinging at balls out of the strike zone, particularly in clutch situations, this might not be an altogether bad thing.
If the Cubs can get A-Rod, maybe they can keep alive their string of winning the World Series in every year ending in "08"
If not next year, they’ll have to wait for the next year ending in “908”...
When are their overpaid, non-producing players going to be fired?
The real problem for NY sports is.....
THE CURSE OF HILLARY!!!!!
If they don't like it, bench 'em.
I am tired of players who make $10 Million who also need somebody to hold their hand and make sure nothing damages their fragile self-esteem.
Clear out all the head cases, and you solve a lot of problems. Seeing the last of A-Rod is the first step.
Posada doesn’t like Girardi. No proof just some scuttlebutt I heard. If so the Yankees will have to up their offer to keep him.
Having said that, I never liked the idea of having a guy go from coach to manager for his first managing position. Mattingly should really spend a year or two managing in the minor leagues before he's ready to take on a big-league managing job.
It is a wonderful thing when players self-identify who has to be shown the door...
A-Rod isn’t a player that is easily replaced. Without Clemens, A-Rod, Torre, Mattingly, and possibly Rivera, Posada and Pettitte
I'm with you on those last three, but A-Rod was a major league bust. Every time the spotlight shone, he wilted.
He has a spectacular regular season this year, but every time he made the back of the papers (caught with a blonde exiting a Toronro strip club, his wife's profane t-shirt), he went into a slump. Not to mention his habitual problems in the postseason.
What good does he do for a team, disappearing when they need him most?
If a player is on the big-league roster then he's taking a roster spot AND taking up "payroll space."
I don't think there are too many A-holes on that team. But I suspect there are more than a couple who might tune out a guy who has all of one year of managing experience and who may have even been a teammate at some point in the past. Girardi's style seems ideal for a young, untested team . . . I don't know how well it'll work with a bunch of veterans.
Girardi would probably be the perfect guy to manage the New York METS.
I don’t like the fact that most baseball players make more in a season than I have made in my lifetime. That aside the Yankees need a top tier catcher. Posada is in the top 3 in the major leagues.
I'm not sure how much of that can be attributed to the hitting coach and how much can be attributed to the players, but there's no doubt that team used to be much more selective at the plate. I think it has more to do with the players' hitting styles . . . Bobby Abreu, for example, faced more pitches per at-bat last season than any other player in the major leagues.
Mattingly also deserves a lot of credit for almost single-handedly turning Robinson Cano into an All-Star caliber hitter.
Like cheering for the dealer at blackjack.
I think the Yankees are going to have to decide that they don't "need" to win the World Series in 2008. What they really need, over the long haul, is a younger version of themselves. They cannot do that catering to aging veterans and trying to win it all every year.
The old Chicago columnist Mike Royko used to pick the World Sreies favorite based on their “ECF” rating - the Ex-Cub Factor. The club with the fewest ex-Cubs had a distinct advantage.
It worked out this year: The Rockies, with ex-Cub LaTroy Hawkins in the bullpen, lost to the Red Sox, who have an ECF of 0. Before that, the Rockies bested the Diamondbacks, who had two ex-Cubs (and even dared to start one of them at second base).
Now the Yankees have done themselves serious damage, placing an ex-Cub in the manager’s slot on top of puka-bead-necklace-wearing Kyle Farnsworth in the bullpen.
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