Joe Torre, you're a pathetic douchebag you are

The BBQ Pit
61

[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
First and foremost, if Joe Torre were to replace Willie Randolph this afternoon, I’d be the happiest Met fan in Branchburg, New Jersey. Randolph is a good example of the kind of manager you’re very likely to get now - has strengths, has weaknesses, and when you add them all together, you get a manager that is perfectly average. Give him the most talented roster in the NL by a wide margin, as he had last year, and he’ll get you to or near to the World Series; reduce the margin of talent by a hair, and it’s a crapshoot.

See, the thing is, I know Torre isn’t a saint, and that he has weaknesses (although, honestly, I’d like you to tell me who the manager is who could take the bullpen the Yankees ran out there this year and “handle it effectively;” there’s “Torre can’t handle a bullpen” and then there’s “The bullpen is Kyle Farnsworth, Luis Vizcaino, and at one point, Jose Veras.” It’s easy to say the manager is handling the staff badly when the staff blows goats).

What I think Yankee fans are overlooking is that, like ballplayers, all managers have weaknesses. Your white horse savior, Joe Girardi, he has them, too. Did you watch 120+ Marlins games in 2006? How the hell do you know that Girardi is what the Yankees need? How do you know that he’s not even worse with the pitching staff than Torre? What you know is that: (1) He has one year of managerial experience, in which he finished below .500; and (2) He was fired because he couldn’t handle a difficult owner. Take Torre’s strengths and his weaknesses and put them all together and you have someone who gave you a chance to win the World Series every year. You can’t say that about Girardi; you have no idea what Girardi is, what he’s good at, what he’s bad at. You’re just enamored of the unknown quantity, of the image you have in your head of this brilliant young tactician - but there’s no evidence to suggest that this is an accurate picture. There IS evidence to suggest that Torre can be a winning manager, so on balance, firing the latter for the former makes no sense.
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In the end it won’t matter, we will probably get stuck with Mattingly, we will probably lose A-Rod and Posada and if that all happens, we might well miss the post season.

You are correct, I did not see Joe G manage more than 9 games that year. I admire what he did with a payroll lower than A-Rod’s, Jeter’s or Giambi’s salaries for the same year. (maybe Moose too.)

Jim

62

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
Jim Leyland, a good manager, just renegotiated his own contract and insisted on a one-year deal. Why can’t Torre take it as a challenge and say “Ok, I’ll take the deal, do my best job ever, win the Series, collect 8 mil, and then they’ll HAVE to give me a longer deal next year”? I know, he feels he doesn’t have to “prove” anything.
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Leyland has lost more games than he’s won as a manager, and he’s won the World Series one-fourth as many times as Torre has.

63

[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
No one has ever been as consistently successful, year in and year out, even those with comparable levels of talent on the team.
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Casey Stengel.

And he wasn’t fired, he was offered a deal that would pay him significantly more than any other manager, basically 2 years worth of competitive salary in one year plus millions in incentives. Let’s see what deal he gets, and how great his teams are, outside of the Yankees. Because, like Stengel, his non-Yankee career has been a testament to mediocrity.

Torre was a great manager for the Yankees, he was also a great manager because of the Yankees. For the record, I don’t mind that Torre said no, and I don’t fault the Yankees for offering a less lavish contract.

64

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Leyland has lost more games than he’s won as a manager, and he’s won the World Series one-fourth as many times as Torre has.
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How many times has Leyland had the highest payroll in the league?

Joe Torre spent 15 years or so as a manager pre-Yanks, and wins the division once. Then gets a job managing the team with the highest payroll, and all of sudden turns into a great manager. Again, what a coincidence!

And a general question for anyone, how much success should any manager expect with the highest payroll in the league every year? Shouldn’t any schmoe off the street be able to submit a lineup card with A-rod, Jeter, etc and expect to at least make the playoffs?

65

It is funny the Yanks are scum when everyone knows what the Yankee Expectation are every year and Joe has failed to achieve them for 4 years.

He was offered a base salary of $5 million. If he made the playoffs, which he has indeed done for 12 straight years he gets an extra million. Then he gets another million for every level he advances to and here is the real kicker, if he made the World Series, the second year at $8 million would kick in.

Why was this such a terrible offer. How many of you just hate the Yankees and are happy to take an excuse to slam them?

He was nearly fired after 2004 and 2006. Last year it was Steve Swindal and Cashman that saved his job. Swindal is already gone, having literally screwed himself out of the picture. I am amazed the Yanks offered as much as they did. I expected a “Thank you for your service Joe, but we are going a different direction speech”.

Does anyone accept the fact that handling George is not the job it was 12 years ago?

Anyone? Bueller?

Don Mattingly, who has no resume at all to judge him on, may be a terrible manager, I am not expecting a lot. He might be a mediocre manager, which might be enough to duplicate what Torre has done. He already commands the respect of the players and the NY Press. George loves him and George is no longer the old George.

I am very public in stating, I do not think Donnie is ready yet, I would love to see Joe G get the job. Maybe I will rue the day, I hoped for that. I think the odds are he will do a great job.

Jim

66

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
He is younger than Joe Torre.

People it is called Baseball-reference.com. Know it, use it.
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Baseball reference still lists El Duque as under 40. No one is younger than Leyland. No one.

Seriously, he has stated his desire to retire on a few occasions, and a 1 year deal holds attraction to him. I think the Tigers would love to lock him up for a few more years. Also worth noting, the Tigers missed the playoffs this year. So, as I was making a joking sort of point…different situation.

67

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
How many times has Leyland had the highest payroll in the league?
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Comparing early-90s payrolls to today would be pretty pointless, but Leyland had Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla with Pittsburgh and never made the Series. I already explained why spending isn’t a realistic way to evaluate how good a team “should” be. Owners and GMs think their team has to be good if they spend a lot of money, but that’s basically a way of saying “the mistakes can’t be coming from my end.”

Who said he was responsible for all of the team’s success? The players win and lose the games, and managers typically get more attention than they should. That doesn’t mean Torre didn’t do well in New York.

The Orioles spent lavishly in recent years and consistently sucked.

68

Wait, I thought it was football season.

69

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]

And a general question for anyone, how much success should any manager expect with the highest payroll in the league every year? Shouldn’t any schmoe off the street be able to submit a lineup card with A-rod, Jeter, etc and expect to at least make the playoffs?
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Well, I guess we’ll find out next year.

70

[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
Wait, I thought it was football season.
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In the NY area, it is always baseball season. Ask the local Football fanatics. Hal Briston complains about this all the time.

Jim

71

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
The way it was played out, no. None of the 50 ESPN commentators who have put their two cents in think it has anything to do with anything other than the lack of respect the offer showed, so it’s not just some crazy theory I pulled out of my ass.
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No, you’re theory is that the offer was for too little money. You’ve said so over and over. Or have you changed it?

72

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
No, you’re theory is that the offer was for too little money. You’ve said so over and over. Or have you changed it?
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Not at all. If they had offered him 10 mil a year I would bet he would have accepted. Why would he have gone into contract negotiations if not to see the money offer? Nothing else changed in the entire scenario except money.

73

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
In the NY area, it is always baseball season. Ask the local Football fanatics. Hal Briston complains about this all the time.

Jim
[/QUOTE]
That’s not true. The baseball season ended on 10/8, and the football season started that day.

The only reason we keep talking baseball after the season is over is that the GIANTS don’t make nearly enough stupid headlines. Shockey hasn’t called Parcells gay in at least two years. Barber can’t retire again. We had a brief flare with Strahan earlier this season, but that seems to have calmed itself. Heck, the Jets get more press, as they are living up to their names (Just End The Season).

74

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
Not at all. If they had offered him 10 mil a year I would bet he would have accepted. Why would he have gone into contract negotiations if not to see the money offer?
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So you think he was not considering the number of years he was offered or the conditions of the deal, just the dollar signs?

Darn, I thought the other half of your mouth finally admitted it was about respect.

75

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
It is funny the Yanks are scum when everyone knows what the Yankee Expectation are every year and Joe has failed to achieve them for 4 years.

[/QUOTE]

The fact that the Yankees are upfront about their ridiculous expectations does not make their expectations any less ridiculous. In the modern baseball atmosphere, expecting to go to the World Series every year is comical. There are 10-15 teams with rosters good enough to make the playoffs every single year. Once the playoffs start, all it takes is two starters on hot streaks and it just doesn’t matter how well you manage. The Yankees could have been managed by a genetically engineered combination of Casey Stengel, George S. Patton, and Apollo, Greek god of the sun, and they still would have gotten wiped by Fausto Carmona pitching the game of his life.

It’s a terrible offer because of its implications. It’s saying, “we expect you to fail, so we will be sure we have an out when you do.” You think A-Rod is going to take a one year deal with a reduced paycheck plus incentives? Or Posada? Or Rivera? Each of them would reject such an offer for exactly the same reason Torre rejected it. Which the Yankees knew he would do.

Which was ridiculous.

Then the Yankees should have kept Swindal and dumped Steinbrenner’s daughter, because at least someone in that organization understood the situation.

Look, I’m not trying to be a dick here; this is an honest question. Why do you think that? Seriously, what has Girardi said or done in his 162 games as a manager in major league baseball that has you so convinced that the odds are he will do a great job? Most managers in baseball do NOT do a great job, at least by the Yankees’ standards, so what is it about Girardi that has you convinced? Because from the outside, it looks like the classic case of the overvalued unknown - where something new and completely untested appeals because you can project all kinds of exciting things onto it, completely disregarding its actual qualities.

76

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Darn, I thought the other half of your mouth finally admitted it was about respect.
[/QUOTE]
I swear I don’t think he’s paying attention to what he’s saying.

I *know *he’s not paying attention to what others are saying.

77

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
I take it that nothing I posted just before you has the ring of validity about Torre and the Yankees, and this is all about spoiled Yankee fans?
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As I said, it’s about classless Yankees management reflecting the thinking of the team’s spoiled fans.

I agree that if the team had simply announced it would not bring back Torre in favor of “a new direction” (or similar euphemism) it wouldn’t have been so bad. Instead they tried to placate Torre supporters by pretending to make a serious offer that they knew would be turned down. Transparent, classless gamesmanship.

The team’s mishandling of the Torre offer did please one of the country’s loudest and most spoiled Yankee fans, Al Neuharth (founder of USA Today, and a guy whose idea of sophisticated baseball prognostication is to pick the Yankees to win the Series every year). According to Neuharth’s column today, Torre is a bum for failing to accept the Yankees’ “overly generous” one-year offer and that he “failed” the Yankees, apparently because he was too “placid” to succeed in the postseason. “Any one of a dozen or more tried - or untried - managers could do a better job than Torre did. The Yankees have so much talent that even the batboy probably could manage them successfully through the regular season.”

So, nothing to worry about, Yankees fans. Pay the batboy a little extra to run the team until the playoffs, then take your pick of whichever manager is available for the playoff run. Fiery Lou Piniella (with his one championship in 20 years of managing) probably could be persuaded to return for the postseason after the Cubs get eliminated next year.

By the way, the comparison between Torre and Casey Stengel seems apt. Although Stengel’s chief crime was getting old (after being fired he swore he’d never make that mistake again).

P.S. I’m not a “Yankee hater”. The players are fine. It’s the ownership, the reporters who cover the team, the gratingly homer-esque announcers and the great majority of the fans who are loathsome. :slight_smile:

78

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
…

P.S. I’m not a “Yankee hater”. The players are fine. It’s the ownership, the reporters who cover the team, the gratingly homer-esque announcers and the great majority of the fans who are loathsome. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

Well, geez if you read the USA Today, you have good reason to hate the reporters. :wink:

79

Joe Torre probably takes the 5 mil base as a personal insult. I do not see it that way. I see it as reeling in out of control salaries as there is not the deep in the playoffs income to justify it anymore. I don’t know what point I’m not getting from other posters, I will be glad to address though. He may see the offer as a lack of respect or appreciation, that’s his problem.

80

Here’s what Torre had to say about it.

Apparently he was bothered by the incentives, and felt that he did not need motivation after 12 years as the manager, and after showing what he can do.