No Joking
“This town needs an enema!” – The Joker, in Batman (circa 1989)
I’ve been thinking about the Yankees this evening – now about five hours past the end of their 2006 season. And…that famous Joker quote will not leave my head.
The days of O’Neill, Stanton, Tino, Pettitte, Brosius, Cone, Knoblauch, Nelson, Girardi, Mendoza, Curtis and Wells are long gone. Sure, Jeter, Mo, Posada, and, to an extent, Bernie remain. But, three or four men cannot carry a ballclub.
The A-Rod’s, Giambi’s, Mussina’s, Sheffield’s, and Big Units that have been with the Yankees recently have corner-stoned a half-decade of post-season failure for the Yankees.
It’s time to purge this Yankees team of it’s current supposed cadre of strength and attempt to re-boot the timbre of the team. The Yankees need a shift of position with respect to their mental modus operandi. They need to get away from a prevailing false sense of entitlement and placid demeanor and adopt a greater sense of urgency and aggressive nature.
The Yankees need to recapture that hunger which finds failure unacceptable. This team needs to retool with the mindset of “We must take it, if we want it. Otherwise, if we assume that it’s just going to happen, we will be let down.”
And, this not only includes playing personnel – it means the manager as well. I found this in the Times this evening (regarding the Yankees) to be interesting:
But the most intriguing question will be the futures of Manager Joe Torre and Rodriguez.
Torre has just one year left on his contract, and the magic he once wielded in the postseason has disappeared. There are club executives who wonder if he should be back, and others in the organization who have noticed that Torre has not won a pennant since the resignation of the bench coach Don Zimmer in October 2003.
The Yankees have lost their last three playoff series, and are 3-10 in the postseason since taking a three-games-to-none lead over Boston in the 2004 American League Championship Series.
Joe Torre had never been to the mountain top prior to 1996. Then, he lived on top of the mountain for several years to follow. In 2001, Torre fell off the mountain. And, while Joe has tried to re-climb the mountain several times now – over the last 5 years – it’s just not happening for him and his camp. As the Times author wrote “the magic he once wielded” has “disappeared.”
It’s time for new blood in Yankeeland. The old blood is tired.
The Yankees should allow Sheffield and Mussina to go. The Yankees should look into trading Alex Rodriguez. If there’s a way, the Yankees should look to move Giambi – even if it means paying part of his salary and getting lesser players in return. The Yankees need to not rely on Randy Johnson anymore and get, at least, two pitchers in their prime for their starting rotation.
And, they should get a new, hungry, aggressive, and passionate manager to set the new tempo and lead this team.
If the Yankees do nothing, then nothing will happen. No joking.
Yes, yes, and yes.
I just posted on the Banter how the only way to turn this ship around is to blow it out of the water.
And, really, if Cashman doesn’t make significant changes, we’re looking at more of the same next season.
Earlier this season I wrote that this team lacks heart. A few of the usual suspects flailed away at that.
I rest my case.
As for moves. A-Fraud has a no-trade clause and I doubt the little man will waive it. What is it now, something like 5-42 in his last 12 post season games? And no, he’s not the whole problem, but he is the poster boy.
Giambi is untradeable, a bad signing, which I was dead against. Never could play 1st base.
Randy Johnosn is dead weight, will he retire? Would you eschew $17 million?
Mussina is what he is, the 3-1 lead that he quickly blew speaks volumes. They’ll probably try and do a deal though.
Sheffield, bye-bye. Another old player. Threats of the Bosox signing him, well that isn’t a way to run a MLB club, are you listening GS et al?
Wright? Wrong? Costs almost as much to buy him out as to bring him back. Blech!
Missing persons alert!!!! Be on the lookout for Carl Pavano, last seen crashing into a garbage truck.
Listen, I’m a muthafuckin diehard goddamn Yankee fan, who watched 90% of the games this season on a little mlb.tv window on my office computer from 6-10 p.m. 4 times a week. Even still, a comment like this strikes me as a little over-entitled:
>I don’t understand how you’re not upset. This >looked like the year the Yankees would finally win number 27.
NUMBER 27??? (My non-Yankee friends say, sarcastically: Oh, poor you!!!) Teams lose, over and over, brutally, and no one has figured it out, THERE IS NO WAY TO GUARANTEE A CHAMPIONSHIP. Baseball is even more fickle than most sports, especially in a ridiculous short series. I just don’t see the need for house cleaning, I don’t even understand what that would look like. I’m sick of A-Rod too, but I’m also sick of Sheffield and Giambi (do you realize Giambi’s been injured/ineffective almost every posteason since we got him?). But there’s a lot to love, and a lot to be appreciative of. I dunno, you guys can throw this team on a spit for 3 bad games where they played like shit, I can’t. It is what it is.
The failures of this team have nothing to do with lack of heart, lack of hunger. It has to do with a failure to make the best decisions considering the resources available. I.e., they need better pitching. Starters and relievers. The End.
for the record, i’m not a yankee fan (cards, but i live here now and can’t help but watch the locals), but my opinion is this: when you have 200 million dollars worth of ego, you are going to need fucking moses to get them all on the same page and lead them to a championship. i don’t know what torre says in the locker room to inspire these guys and get them to feel like they are on a badass team and not just a bunch of badass players, but it’s not working. they’re going to need to decide if they want to figure out how to motivate what next year will most likely be another 200million dollar team (hard to believe they’ve spent 600 mill in the last 3 years and nothing to show), or will they get a team assembled that has two or three badasses and have chemistry with the rest of the team to kick ass and have fun. to me, this “27th” bullshit and “being a yankee” is ridiculous. yeah yeah, i know the history, it gets recited to me at every bar i go to, but these guys need to get “#1″ as THIS yankee team. by all means tell me to go to hell if i’m out of line.
Torre is going to be fired: http://tinyurl.com/ep7rm
Piniella to get the job as well, according to this.
I’m pretty sure this is the end. But why Pinella? I think a younger manager would be better…i’m not saying Girardi would be a good manager or anything….
I’ll believe that Torre will be fired when I see it. Until that time, I’m skeptical. I’m in favor of it. His lineup in game 4 was a linup conceived in panic mode. He never has shown an ability to build a well-rounded bullpen that doesn’t end up blowing out some pitchers’ arms (see Quantrill, Sturtze, Gordon, etc.). The fact that he blew out Ron Villone is the primary reason for the loss of the turning point game 2. This is Jeter’s team, but Torre doesn’t need to reinforce that at every turn. Subconsciously, I think that Torre’s attachment to Jeter has affected his handling of ARod.
I’m also skeptical of this focus on the team’s “heart.” Making decisions based on “heart” can lead to very poor decisions. Re-signing Brosius after 1998 was a mistake. O’Neill hung on a year too long. The Yankee’s stuck with Tino Martinez too long. The Yankees won despite declining production from these corner players — not because of it.
The Yankees should be managed like they were in the 1950s. Those teams never kept a player beyond when his utility to the team ran out. In that era, personnel decisions weren’t made on the basis of sentimentality but with a cold-hearted focus on what it would take for the Yankees to win.
Here’s the one problem with all this blow-it-up hysterics everyone is screaming about.
This team cruised to a division win. It WAS a good team. Everyone was creaming their shorts when it was Damon-Jeter-Bobby-Giambi-A-Rod-Posada-Cano-Melky-Guiel/Matsui/whoever was playing that night. It’s not like 2005, where this team looked bad in the regular season and had to turn it on late in the year to even make the post-season. This team played well. We all commented on the great chemistry.
But the post-season is a different animal. And Torre shoe-horned Matsui and Sheffield into the lineup. Plus Damon’s bat went dead in September and the playoffs, Giambi was hurt, Melky wasn’t in the lineup, and Cano showed his age. The only two guys who hit in the playoffs were Jeter and Posada (part of the “rings crowd,” interestingly).
And the pitching stunk. Bottom line: when you count on Randy Johnson (at this age) and Jaret Wright for anything, you will lose.
There’s no need to try to trade Giambi. Are you going to find a better DH than him? He’s going to hit 35 home runs next year and walk 100 times. That’s what he does. Is he a physical wreck? Yes. His body is falling apart. But I’d rather him be here than pay ten million dollars for him to walk away.
And getting rid of Moose would be a big mistake, too. Trust me, sometime next year Phil Hughes is going to be on this team, and others might follow (who knows, our rotation could include Clippard and Rasner if we don’t do the right thing this off-season). They need Moose on that staff. Especially if Gator is still the pitching coach. Moose is a smart guy that knows how to deal with young pitchers (haven’t you heard enough of how Rogers was a father figure to his young teammates?).
Sheffield shouldn’t come back. That’s obvious. But after that the only important moves are getting rid of Torre and A-Rod, whose aura of failure here in New York sucks this team into a blackhole.
And as for this bunch of nonsense –
["I don't understand how you're not upset. This looked like the year the Yankees would finally win number 27."
NUMBER 27??? (My non-Yankee friends say, sarcastically: Oh, poor you!!!) Teams lose, over and over, brutally, and no one has figured it out, THERE IS NO WAY TO GUARANTEE A CHAMPIONSHIP.]
– you’re completely taking my comment out of context. What I was saying was that there was no Red Sox this year and no Angels this year, the two teams that give us trouble. Instead, we had the Tigers, Twins and A’s, all teams we normally beat. If not having your two toughest teams isn’t a clear path to the World Series, then I don’t know what is. (We also very nearly swept the Tigers in the regular season.) There’s no sense of entitlement in predicting you’re going to win. And there’s also no sense of entitlement in stating a fact, which is that the Yankees have won 26 World Championships.
I agree with everything baileywalk says except his desire to trade ARod for the sake of trading ARod. They have to get a lot back for him. If they don’t, it could be another Plunck, Polonia, Cadaret-level disaster.
Earlier this season I wrote that this team lacks heart. A few of the usual suspects flailed away at that.
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They didn’t need heart, they needed to hit. Even “Captain Clutch” looked lost outside of his 5-5 game.