storyteller0910, well done. The Sarcasm was awesome. Very funny.
I don’t think Mattingly is being considered very seriously. The early front runners appear to be Joe Girardi and Tony LaRussa.
I do think it is time for Joe T. to go. I am sure I am in a minority, but Torre has been terrible in post season games. He is a excellent season manager where his calm demeanor and ability to deal with the Press and the Boss are remarkable. His in game screw-ups don’t matter as much over 162 games.
He has been mismanaging the post season for years. He had the crutch in the World Series years of Zimmer to bounce ideas off of and the greatest bullpen ever assembled.
Everyone complains about the Yankee payroll, but with that payroll comes the expectation to not be eliminated 3 straight years in the first round. Yes, the team was ill-conceived coming out of spring. But, the entire team was remade during the season. They were the best team in the second half. Expectation had risen for some reason related to this turn around.
BTW: Clemens did not start the year with the Yanks, he was a George Steinbrenner requested addition during the season.
Girardi would be a fair choice, I guess, but the dude got fired in Florida because he couldn’t get along with an autocratic and difficult owner. LaRussa would be a disaster in New York City; the fans would turn on him in six weeks, the first time he made a questionable move tha didn’t pan out and then turned on the condescension post-game.
Well, OK. You watch the Yankees more than I do on a day-to-day basis, so you know more about his in-game managing than I. But even if the above is true, would not a better approach be to get him a new Zimmer figure and a better bullpen? No manager that you hire is going to be perfect, so trading the (modest) faults of the one you have for the (potentially much more significant) faults of an unknown commodity makes no sense.
But this is unfair to Torre (I can’t believe I’m defending a Yankee to a Yankee fan; the world is teetering on its axis). The team was badly assembled coming out of the spring, as my post implies - they had too many old players, too many players prone to injury. But the turnaround they made had nothing to do with a remaking of the team - how was the team remade? They brought up Hughes and Chamberlain, gave some at bats to Shelley Duncan, but that second half turnaround happened because Bobby Abreu started to hit, because Johnny Damon started to hit, because Joe found everyday playing time for Melky Cabrera, because Torre kept the ship from tipping over.
They lost in the playoffs because they ran face first into a team with two excellent starters (and a third who pitched over his head last night) and an amazing bullpen. They lost because Brian Cashman put Joe Torre in a position where he had exactly two relievers on whom he could count, because the SuperStarter that Steinbrenner had to have - surprise! - was old, and because Steinbrenner and Cashman forced Torre to start Wang (on short rest) instead of Mussina last night.
Absolutely, something must be done. They should continue working young players into the lineup, and allow attrition to get rid of the old dogs like Jason Giambi. Continue being patient with the young pitchers, and I’d argue that trading Wang (not because of his disastrous ALDS, but because pitchers of his statistical profile almost invariably crash and burn after a few good years) for value and bringing aboard one more starter via free agency. If I were the Yankees, I might work a deal for A.J. Burnett, who the Jays might be willing to part with, and deal Wang in the process. Burnett is a better bet, IMHO, and I bet you could swing Wang and his gaudy W-L records to someone for more talent than you’d have to send to Toronto to get Burnett, assuming the Yanks take his whole salary.
Do that, and the team will continue to contend. Why mess with success?
Firing Joe Torre will not make the team better. It will make the team worse.
It will at least be very different. Rivera & Posada (Torre disciples) are likely gone if he goes. Clemens & Giambi are probably headed toward retirement.
Rivera wants to open the new Stadium. He’ll stay. Posada might be pissed enough to leave. Clemens will be gone. Giambi gets to collect one more $20m year and a $5m buyout. He “ain’t” retiring.
RickJay: Wang for Burnett is crazy, maybe Wang for Santana, but you are just trying to unload the Bluejays costly mistake on the Yanks.
I’m curious about what statistics you’re referring to here. I’ve never gotten that deep into predicting future performance from statistics, so I’d like to know the thought process for Wang breaking down.
Torre or no, I’m excited for the future, we have a number of talented young pitchers, it’ll be a lot of fun to see their progress.
BTW, I thought it was practically criminal to have left Joba in there with all the bugs. It was clearly bothering the shit out of him, and you have Mariano Rivera in the bullpen. I suspect that a 13 year veteran closer who grew up in Panama might be able to shrug off some bugs better than a kid from Nebraska with all of 2 months experience as a reliever. It’s a 1-0 game, maybe get your closer warmed up in the 8th. Didn’t have a problem using Rivera for 2 innings back in April, just after promising not to.
Rivera is not pleased, for more reasons than Torre likely leaving. Torre’s departure seems to be icing. Some team will throw a treasure his way. Stranger things’ve happened.
Posada is also going to go where the money is, and again, Torre getting canned makes the Yankees that much less attractive to him.
Giambi will still be a member of the team, but he’ll be a once-a-month pinch hitter in a garbage situation.
I still would not expect Rivera to go.
I will not be surprised if Posada goes. (I will be sad, very sad as will my little boy)
I have been cursing the Giambi deal since the day we outbid ourselves for his services. Overpaying is not so bad. It is the Yankee way and all, but we gave him far too many years. At the time, I wanted to keep Tino for two more years and sign Damon. Instead we signed a DH to place 1st.
This was apparently to give YES a slugging star at the expense of the team improving.
Jim (If you have not guessed, I am not a Giambi fan)
Cheesesteak: Not speaking for RickJay here, but I think the main concern with Wang is that he doesn’t strike that many people out (<4K/9 for his career), and very few pitchers with strikeout numbers that low succeed. Tom Glavine is usually tossed out as the exception that proves the rule, and it’s illustrative here: He doesn’t strike out many people at all, but Glavine’s K/9 is still over 5.
Yeah, the idea of Don Zimmer as a tactical genius is just amusing as all get-out.
I’m a Yankee fan, and I’m torn on this. Torre does have his weaknesses - over-relying on certain releivers is one. Not pulling Chamberlain and the team off the field in the Bug Game in Cleveland was inexcusable.
But - he has his strengths, and they are quite considerable. Being able to deal with the media, and the Steinbrenner pressure, is incredibly valuable.
The concept of replacing him with LaRussa frightens me - he’d be such an awful fit. I’m not sold on Girardi, and I don’t see any sign that Mattingly would be a good manager. While a fresh, young face might be a good thing for the team long term, I don’t know of one who is a sure bet, and it’s real unlikely Steinbrenner would go that way.
The perverse fan in me wants them to go out and get Bobby Valentine…
And I’d trade Wang for Burnett in a heartbeat. Like Rickjay, I think Wang’s a bad bet long term. Pitchers with low strikeout rates just don’t last. Wang got a little bit better there this year - up to 4.7 per 9 IP from 3.16 last year - but that is still very low (5th lowest among qualifiers in the AL - ironically, Paul Byrd was one of the lower ones). Yes, Wang is three years younger and has a better track record for health, but I’d still take Burnett. Of course no way Ricciardi would do that - like Rickjay said, the only way that happens is with a third team involved.
Because Posada will be 37 next year, if he stays a Yankee theyshould consider moving him to 1b. If I was running any other team I wouldn’t look to Posada as a free agent,long term solution to my team’s catching problems. He would be a nice final link to a team that need only a catcher, but he’s no longer a building block.
As a Red Sox fan, either of those two choices would be fine by me; you either get Girardi the Moron, or an aging LaRussa (quick: who was the last senior citizen manager to win the World Series? I can’t honestly think of one-okay LaRussa won’t be 65 for two more years, but point made). Mattingly would be the sensible and logical choice hence he has no chance of being selected.
A pitcher’s chances of continued success are directly proportional to his strikeout rate. Pitchers who strike a lot of batters out last longer than pitchers who do not. (Assuming the same initial performance and health.) Pitchers who strike out fewer than the league average NEVER last long. There might be one or two exceptions in a generation - Bob Tewksbury lasted longer than the usual no-K pitcher - but if you go back and find all the pitchers who’ve won a bundle of games with really low strikeout rates you will that find none of them lasted, or else some change was made to their delivery that changed the type of pitcher they were (e.g. Scott Erickson or Roy Halladay.) Betting AGAINST low-strikeout pitchers is a winning strategy.
Wang does not strike out many batters, or in fact anywhere near the league average. Wang struck out 4.7 men per nine innings this year, which was almost two strikeouts below the league average. That is is carer high so far. He is almost certainly doomed, barring some major change in the way he pitches; I cannot think of any pitcher in modern baseball history two K’s below the league average who had long term sustained success. I realize it sounds like an awfully broad blanket statement but it is a remarkably consistent fact of life in major league baseball. Could Wang be the Bob Tewksbury of today? It’s possible, but I’d wager against it.
Such pitchers can have considerable success for a little while. It never lasts. I can see Wang having another good year or two, because it’s not like a Jeff Ballard type deal where he just got really lucky one year; he does have a good sinker and gets ground balls, and such pitchers can have some success. But not too much; it just doesn’t last. He is now as valuable as he will ever be, and is the very definition of a commodity you should trade. There’s some idiot out there who will trade good young talent for him.
