Davidoff: Yanks Ugly & Fans Deserve Better

Via Ken Davidoff today -

For those Yankees fans who are still watching dreck like Game 1 of yesterday’s day-night doubleheader, rest assured that the professionals agree with you.

“I’ve never seen a Yankees team play like that,” a scout from another club said in amazement after the Yankees dropped a 7-1 decision to the Rays. “Cano was swinging at first pitches like it was getaway day. Nady was just lobbing the ball in. The only guy out there playing hard was Jeter.”

It’s all right to miss the playoffs. We get that. But the Yankees kicked off their final homestand at old Yankee Stadium in embarrassing fashion, with their play on the field seriously suspect once again and a Steinbrenner stirring it up off the field, old-school.

When a team plays in the lackluster fashion the Yankees have for the last couple of weeks, the manager has to be held responsible.

You could argue that the Girardi hiring has been Brian Cashman’s most questionable decision since Cashman became a bona fide general manager almost three years ago. Yet Girardi will get next year to turn things around, and he deserves that chance.

Which brings us to Cashman, who, a friend confirmed, was quite annoyed by Hank Steinbrenner’s public assertion that the Yankees could use the type of advisory committee George Steinbrenner had in the ’90s.

The reason the Yankees are missing the playoffs this year has more to do with their actions from, say, 1998 to 2003, when the high majority of their amateur draft picks tied into signability rather than talent. That’s why they have an old lineup, and why their farm system, while developing quite nicely – that same disapproving scout mentioned how talented the Yankees’ Class A Charleston club was this year – wasn’t quite ready to help this year’s team sufficiently.

Upstairs and downstairs at this historic building, which should be strolling off into retirement, it’s too often an ugly mess. The fans, and the supposed ghosts that reside here, deserve better.

So, Davidoff sets this mess down at the feet of Lin Garrett. I can agree with that. Then again, if Brian Cashman had come from a scouting background, instead of the intern-white-collar route, perhaps he would not have had the need to strongly rely on, and defer to, Lin Garrett as much (on things like the draft)? That’s possible too.

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