There are no guarantees, but if you make a guy a ten-year offer, you’re telling him you might want him to be there in 10 years. If you make a one year offer, you’re saying “your replacement isn’t quite ready yet.”
And this offer stipulated that he wasn’t going to come back if they didn’t win the Series. They were obviously not that interestedin having him back.
In any case, you’re trying to have it both ways - you said he’s a sucker for taking their money and a douchebag for turning it down. If he’d said yes, you’d still be calling him a douchebag. So what’s with the outrage?
I don’t have an opinion of Torre’s mangerial skills, partly because I don’t think there’s any real skill involved, other than choosing who plays, when to pull a pitcher, how to align the defense, etc, all of which can be done effectively by simply looking at past stats. But IIRC he has had the highest payroll, or close to highest, every year he’s been with the Yankees. Which means for 12 years he’s had great talent, All-Star caliber talent, at almost every position. I would think based on that, 3 titles in 12 years could be seen as underachieving.
K. You’ve taken that “hilarious” fact far out of context. Would you take a paycut from your obviously-reluctant and abusive employer of 12 years after doing yet another good job?
That’s how Yankee management wants people to believe - it’s always someone else’s fault - but paying the most for the players doesn’t mean you’ve put the best team together. The Yankees have signed a lot of good players, but they’ve also spent a lot of money on past-their-prime stars and mediocre pitchers that could have been better spent elsewhere. (And generally, the owners came up with the bad ideas.) Torre made mistakes, but the biggest ones weren’t his. He didn’t pay Carl Pavano $40 million, he didn’t pay Kei Igawa $46 million, or deplete the farm system for years. I did think starting Wong in game four this year was a really bad idea.
And no. It’s not overachieving. 12 straight playoff appearances and 4 World Series titles is basically as good as it gets. It wouldn’t matter how much money you spent, if you had a budget of $500 million a year; practically speaking, the Yankees have won about as many regular season games as it is possible to win over an extended eperiod of time, and to then win the World Series four out or twelve tries is actually OVERACHIEVING.
No matter how good you think the team has been - and let’s be honest, he hasn’t always had the best talent in the league - in an eight-team playoff series your average chance of success is 12.5%, and even if you’re the best team in baseball it’s no better than 25%. Even if all managers were the same, if a team goes to the playoff twelves straight times you’d expect them to win the World Series only one to three times; four times is more than can be expected. Torre has outperformed what you’d expect. At least two of his World Series teams have been very weak teams by the standard of World Champions, and he shepherded a team with no starting rotiation into the playoffs this year.
There is no chance at all that his replacement can do better than Torre has over the last twelve years. None, zero, zip, nada. Boy oh boy, are Yankee fans gonna be mad.
Gee, if that’s all it takes, then there are several hundred thousand Rotisserie league managers sitting around who could do the job for peanuts, compared to what they pay real managers. And we’d have thirty-odd major league teams in the playoffs (despite the rules that limit it to eight) – because that’s the measure of a good manager, according to your standards.
It seems to me that an important factor in managing is to motivate players to get the most out of each, to ensure that whatever skills a given player may be skimpy on are addressed in training – on an ongoing basis, to turn a bunch of guys hired to play baseball into a team.
And when you have a loudmouthed asshole who makes you look like slime mold in public to get himself news headlines on the average of twice a year, to bite your tongue and take it until you’ve had enough.
Joe Torre had enough.
He’s not the best manager in professional baseball, not by a long shot. He is, arguably, extremely good at what he does. He’s a patient, soft-spoken man. But even patient, soft-spoken men have their limits.
It’s very interesting to me, WB, that you see no other possible reasons for his decision than money and, when pressed on the issue, debilitating disease. I can think of at least six other factors that might motivate someone to choose to sign a contract or refuse to do so. And the closest I’ve ever come is shaking Bobby Cox’s hand once.
I figured this was the sports equivalent of the political retirement “to spend more time with family.” If the Yankees didn’t really want him and if he didn’t really want to manage, then why not make a reasonable but lower offer and let him say “no thanks”?
Agree 100% the playoffs in baseball are a crapshoot- a couple bad starts by good pitchers and you’re out. Which is why there really isn’t a need to pay Torre 7 million when its a lot of luck involved- all you need is someone to get you there, and with that talent, any number of managers should be able to do so- for example Clint Hurdle or Eric Wedge- they’ve gotten this far with their talents, couldn’t they do similar with the Yanks, for a lot less pay? I just don’t buy that the team with similar talent and payroll next year are going to miss the playoffs just because Torre ins’t on the bench, but we’ll know for sure a year from now. If a player making 10 mil needs a manager to stoke his ego and give him warm fuzzies to get him to play good, that’s a pretty sad player.
I also wonder what his players like Rivera who have showed him loyalty and said the wouldn’t resign without him are thinking now- surely there have to be one or two Yanks who stayed with the team for less money to play for Torre? Yes its a business, and he can do what he wants, but don’t talk all that crap about how much you care about your players and love them so much and then go out like this. If Torre had told them to fuckoff the day after they lost in the playoffs, and said he had enough of George’s shit, I’d say good for him. But to wait until you see the money offered and then quit exposes him for what he is.
Polycarp, I’d be interested in just one other reason to quit at the time he quit.
Why am I not surprised that my beloved A’s (yes, I’m an athletic supporter) are on the bottom of the list? If the Boss had any brains, he’d spend the money on Beane.
So if he likes the players, he’s obliged to take a paycut and a bunch of shit from his employers? That doesn’t make sense. He could’ve gone back to work for people who didn’t want him, but I don’t see that as being better than what he did.
If he tells the team to fuck off, he doesn’t come back next year anyway. How would that have showed his love for the players?
He’s been taking his shit for 12 years, and he only becomes sick of it enough to quit the day he gets an offer of a pay cut? What a coincidence!
And yeah, demotions suck, paycuts suck. Millions of people have dealt with that. But he’s still would have been the highest paid manager in the league by far, and will absolutely not get more than that anywhere else, cause no other teams offer that.
Telling him to fuck off right after they lost, as a player I would think good for him, I love him and I’lll miss him, but George is a dick and I don’t blame him. Quitting after the money offer shows what he’s all about.
So he turned down the best-paying job? Gee… maybe that means it’s not just about money. Torre’s already made his fortune anyway. The team sent him a message with the offer and he got the message, so he turned it down.
Unless he has the same finance manager as Mike Tyson, I’m sure Torre is set for life, money wise. It being about the money here doesn’t mean he needs the extra two and half million to live- obviously not, because now his options are a much smaller manager salary, an even smaller broadcaster job or nothing. It being about the money in this case is the status his salary had, and now he’ll be embarassed by accepting less than he was making, even if it was more than he’ll get elsewhere. If I were a Yankee fan I’d be insulted.
The audacity that being the highest paid manager is not good enough for him is unfathomable- all the other stuff about George’s shit is irrelevant* by Torre’s own comments * that that’s what you get if you are the Yankee manager, he knows it, and can handle it. Read Torre’s comments last week after George’s statement- he was not bothered at all. If they had given him a 10 year 100 million dollar offer, would he be able to take George’s shit for ten more years?
And he wants to feel loved? A fucking 67 year old man wants a 77 year old man to show him love? Pathetic if true.
Status isn’t the same as greed, and most people would probably leave their jobs, if they had the financial security Torre does, rather than accept this kind of offer.
If he wants to go somewhere else, it’ll be his choice and not embarrassing at all. Which, again, will be about how he’s treated and not how much he’s paid. He knows his options if he’s not ready to retire: he’ll get to dictate his own terms, as opposed to this offer, which was faux-charity from the Yankees. Money is nothing to them, as shown by their huge luxury tax payments. They have no problem signing a player for that much if he’s injured, just in case they need him when he comes back mid-season. But suddenly they decided they’d been overpaying Torre, and he was only worth having around if he could bring home another championship. That’s no reward for 12 years of steady winning.
And I don’t believe that Steinbrenner’s comments didn’t bother him. He knew what to say about it in public, but that had to be a constant irritation - which is exactly what it was supposed to be.
Reading the sports pages and watching the ALCS, it sounds like nobody except you pins this on Torre.
Who said anything about love? It’s about getting a modicum of respect from your employer. He’d earned more than that for his successes.
May I add, I don’t agree that the 5 mil plus incentives is an insult. Yes, I know that you can give someone a bad offer with the hopes that they’ll get mad and quit, if that’s what you want. If they’d offered him one mil, I would think that’s what they were doing. Firing him would also show they don’t want him. But by offering him a salary that is lower but makes him still the highest paid manager, that shows they are still trying to give him the respect of the Yankee manager being highest paid, but maybe trying to reel in the overall team salary.
Why can’t it be they realize its one thing to have a 2-300 mil payroll plus luxury tax when you are winning the Series, but maybe when you are not it might be time to reel it in a bit? Maybe they now see they’ve been overspending on players and managers and don’t have the extra income going late in the playoffs gets to justify it? I seriously doubt Clemens, if he gets an offer next year, will get anywhere near what he got this year. So I don’t think it will be only Torre who will see a smaller offer from the Yanks. Players who haven’t had success often get smaller offers than before, so I don’t see the problem here.
Well, he very clearly indicated after the Yankees lost Game 3 against the Indians that working in New York is a pressure cooker for the staff and players alike. It’s not like they just give him a big pot of money for showing up–Steinbrenner expects to win every year, as Torre said in his post-game interview. Knocking him for taking Steinbrenner’s crap is ridiculous–how much crap would any one of us take for $7+ million a year? For half as much? But after years in N.Y. Torre’s got enough money, and he’s taken enough b.s., so he finally just reached his tipping point.
Offering him $5 million was a pretty classless move for such a high-profile guy and organization. It was clearly a way for the Yankees to grease the skids for his departure, without having to fire him outright. Torre deserved better, but I doubt he, of all people, was surprised it came to this.
Players exhibit a measurable decline in skills as they age. Managers (most anyway) don’t.
The problem comes in the form of a one year deal. That is an insult to a manager. If you believe your manager is good, you don’t offer him a contract that basically makes him a lame-duck the second he signs it (unless he gets to the series). If he’s doing a good job, sign him for at least 2 years. If you don’t want him, don’t make an offer. Torre deserves more respect than to basically be offered the ‘interm’ manager job. Why the Yankees have to go through this pathetic dog and pony show is beyond me.
Why Wee Bairn supports the decision so much is also a little puzzling. Do you honestly think 2 million makes a difference to Torre? Even better, do you think it makes a difference to the Yankees? If they wanted him, 3 years & 23 mil is a drop in the freakin’ bucket. Or are we saving that money for the next Carl Pavano?
