Friday, October 12, 2007
North Jersey: Yanks seem set to let Torre go
NEW YORK—The wait to discover Joe Torre’s managerial fate will carry through the weekend. In a few days, the Yankees will transfer the whole show to Tampa, where organizational meetings are expected to begin Tuesday.
Topic A is Torre, though the buzz from Legends Field to the Bronx still wasn’t very positive for the man who guided the Yanks to 12 straight postseasons.
...
The feeling is that too many opinions of key club officials would have to be altered to prevent a managerial change—an extremely tall order.
For everyone tired of the Alex Rodriguez story, there’s the Joe Torre story.
I have not opined on whether or not the Yankees keep Torre. First off, I don’t think Torre can be blamed in any way for the ALDS loss to Cleveland. The Yankees got outplayed by a better team overall, and no manager would have gotten a better performance out of Chien-Ming Wang, which was a huge culprit in the series loss.
Torre has good and bad points, just like any manager. I’m fairly certain that the collective fan bases of every single team dislikes a lot of the things their team’s managers do. I respect and like Joe Torre as a person. He’s been the manager for the most successful period of Yankees history that I can recall. He does some great work with his Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation, and I think in most cases he does a great job of protecting most of his team from the media (although I think that took a hit last year with his treatment of Rodriguez in a Sports Illustrated article and when he batted Rodriguez 8th in the ALDS against Detroit). That being said, I think that he is not a good tactical manager in certain areas. My chief complaints with Torre are that he is too enamored with small-ball tactics at times and I don’t think he manages his bullpen well. Whether that outweighs the things that he may be good at, I have no idea. If the Yankees are really ready for a youth movement, Torre may not be the right man for the job.
I love Mariano Rivera. He’s my favorite Yankee. I absolutely do not blame Mo for standing up for Torre. It’s his right to do it, and it’s completely understandable why he would do it. Anyone blasting Rivera for this should remember the fact that it was Torre who broke Mo in and it was Torre who made Mo what he is today. This is just further proof of what a stand-up guy Rivera is. However, I don’t think the Yankees should bring Torre back just to appease Rivera or anyone else. They need to make a decision on if keeping Torre is a better option than replacing him with someone else. Players should not dictate organization direction, they should play.
The two most likely candidates to replace Torre seem to be Don Mattingly and Joe Girardi. There are also rumblings that the Yankees are considering Tony LaRussa and Bobby Valentine. In my personal order of preference of those four candidates I’d probably favor Girardi, then Valentine, then Mattingly, then LaRussa. I’m not a big fan of LaRussa, but as several posters have mentioned that would also probably mean bringing in Dave Duncan as a pitching coach. Duncan has a good reputation although it is mainly based on his work with veterans. I’m not sure if he’s the right pitching coach to entrust with the development of Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy.
Page 1 of 1 pages: