Move on from Joe talk
The people who run the Yankees, starting with the owner, need to stop explaining now why they decided to let Joe Girardi go. There’s no need to go over this again: The Yankees had a right to make this change. Had a right to want a new voice in the clubhouse, and addressing their young stars. It took nerve to essentially fire a guy who just had them within one victory of the team’s first World Series in eight years, and only its second Series in the last 14 years.
But we get why they did what they did. We do. We’re good. The Yankees got their reasons out there before anybody had to say anything in public. By now, people in outer space know that Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman had concerns about Girardi’s “connectivity.”
No more explanations, about an incredibly loyal company man, a guy like Girardi who conducted himself in such a professional, winning way after assuming an almost impossible task, which means replacing Joe Torre. Someone needs to explain to Hal it’s time to move on.
Here, in case you missed it, is what the Yankees’ principal owner said the other day at owners’ meetings:
“As I told (Brian Cashman), I wasn’t following his recommendation: I agreed with it. He and I have had these discussions for a considerable length of time, over and over again. This isn’t something we just decided we wanted to sit down and do at the end of the season. We’ve had a lot of discussions through the years.”
Of course Cashman, in his own explanation about Girardi’s effective firing, not only cited “connectivity” but also “communication.” Now Steinbrenner wanted everybody to understand that what happened to Girardi would likely have happened even if the Yankees had gotten one more game off the Astros and beaten the Dodgers in the World Series.
“I’m sure there would have been more pressure,” Steinbrenner said. “It would have been maybe a more difficult decision to make. But I would have made it because I felt like that was best for the organization moving forward.’’ So move ove forward already. I am one who felt that Steinbrenner and Cashman shman had a perfect right to do what hat they did. I keep saying that Cashman shman has placed an awfully big bet on himself by switching managers nagers at this moment in Yankee ee history. He has not only put a tremendous amount of pressure ure on Girardi’s replacement, but on himself. But he shouldn’t ’t say another word about Girardi, , and neither should Hal Steinbrenner. enner. We get it. We’re good.
These e things hardly ever end well. l. They didn’t end well with h the great Joe Torre, whom I believe was the single most important ant manager in all of Yankee history. Torre e did not just st win four ur World d Series in five years ars between en 1996 and 2000, an n accomplishment hment in an era where you have to win three playoff rounds that stands with the Yankees once winning five World Series in a row between 1949 and 1953, but he made the Yankee brand important again. No Yankee team will ever do as much as Torre’s Yankees did. And Torre felt as if he were being shoved towards the door after the 2007 season, and felt insulted when the Yankees offered him an incentive incentive-enhanced enhanced contract after everything he had done and everything everyth he had meant. So he chose not to take it. Girardi, after leaving Yankee Ya Stadium up three games to two on the Astros, never had a choice, had no choice. He wasn’ wasn’t shoved towards the door. Jus Just shown it. We all know w what the record was. We kno know all about what I think is a c complicated resume: The one Series victory in ’0 ’09, the seasons out o of the playoffs, the loss to the Ranger Rangers one year in the American Leag League Champion pionship Series bec because they tra traded for Cliff Le Lee and the Ya Yankees did no not, the Tiger gers sweeping the them in another A ALCS after Der Derek Jeter brok broke his ankle. The There was the year when the Yan Yankees were able to grind their way to a Wild Card, only to get shut out by the Astros, in a preview of coming attractions for the baseball October of 2017.
But here is what must be asked about Girardi’s fine work — again, after following Torre — over 10 years in a job that is like coaching Notre Dame football: When did he not win when he was supposed to win, other than with this Yankee team?
More and more you get the idea that Cashman thought that if they came as close as they did against the Astros, they should have made the Series. For the last time, once Cashman made those deals at the trade deadline, he honestly thought he could win this season, as loaded as the Astros and the Indians were going into the playoffs. He thought he could get enough starting pitching in October, hit home runs, and back everything up with his bullpen.
And the Yankees nearly made it, before they had to face Justin Verlander in Game 6 and before Charlie Morton and Lance McCullers, Jr. did the same thing in Game 7 that they would do to the Dodgers in Game 7 of the Series.
Joe Girardi did very good work here, for a long time. Do the Yankees have a right to think that they need somebody else to take over the present and the future? Sure, even though all those who act as if this is the beginning of a dynasty ought to ask themselves where they think the Astros, and Indians, and Red Sox are going.
The people in charge of the Yankees probably don’t think they’re describing him as damaged goods, but they are, every time they start talking about this again. They need to stop it now, or people will start worrying about their communication skills.