I spent much of my “Twitter time” in September defending Joe Girardi’s plan for preparing for the postseason. While the team was clearly struggling as Girardi rested players and held postseason roster auditions, he was skewered in the media for costing the Yankees a division title. I felt at the time that Joe was making the right move, as close observation showed that Joe had most of the players important to a potential Yankees World Series run rested, healthy and effective going into October. Additionally, while losing the division cost the Yankees one home game for the upcoming ALCS, it also ensured that they would face the inferior potential opponent in the ALDS. Once the Yankees swept the Twins, I did not expect any of the media members who had ripped into Girardi every day for a month to do much more than briefly acknowledge that Joe may have known what he was doing.
Surprisingly, I was wrong. Wally Matthews, of all people, penned a column in which he called Girardi the MVP of the ALDS:
Yet no one did more to ensure that the New York Yankees would advance to the second round of playoffs, the final hurdle between them and another World Series, than the only Yankee who didn’t play for one pitch of any of the three games….
For all the head-scratching we self-styled experts have done over some of his in-game moves and his interview-room gyrations of the tumultuous final month of the regular season, it is Girardi who comes out looking like a genius…..
And it was he who, as September became a sticky mess of shoddy play and growing uncertainty, doggedly stuck to his plan of resting his regulars — ultimately at the cost of winning the AL East — in the hopes of having a healthy roster come October.
He was ridiculed for many of these moves, and quite frankly, at times I was one of the ridiculers.
But right is right, fair is fair, and you are what your record says you are. In his fourth season as a manager, Girardi now has one Manager of the Year Award, one World Series ring and, now, a 3-0 record in the 2010 playoffs and the luxury of allowing his team to rest a full five days while waiting for the Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays to settle their increasingly nasty argument…
And thanks to Girardi’s careful rotation of off days and DH days for his aging and aching core, it is likely that by the time the ALCS gets under way, Jeter, Teixeira, Nick Swisher, Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada will be as fresh and rested as it is possible to be after 165 games.
That last paragraph is the reason I credit Girardi for a job well done in both 2009 and 2010. In both seasons, the Yankees have gone into the postseason as healthy as it is possible to be with an aging core of veterans. The lineup does not have single hitter who is exceedingly worn out, and it showed in the Yankees offense against the Twins. The bullpen is fresh as well, as Kerry Wood, Dave Robertson, Boone Logan, and Mariano Rivera look primed to have a strong October. And although the rotation is not perfect, Andy Pettitte pitched well enough to justify his Game 2 start and Phil Hughes looks quite strong despite having surpassed his career high for innings.
Although the Yankees were not winning down the stretch, they were making sure that when the games actually became important, they would be in the best possible position to succeed. It is a credit to Girardi that he had the confidence to execute his plan despite the angry bleatings of some fans and most of the media, and it is a credit to Matthews that he was able to admit that he was wrong and tip his cap to the manager.
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8 Responses to Credit Where It Is Due
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TIQ IQ
Yeah but the guy is thin and uses a binder, so how much credit can we really give him?
I learned my lesson when I criticized his BP decisions earlier in the year.
I think the 2+ days from the end of the season added to his resting of the nicked up and the tired players got them ready to go in a big way.
On the other hand, I hope all of the regulars participate in at least one of the intra-squad games.
Kudos to Wally. I’ve never been a fan of his work, but at least he’s displayed a willingness to listen to Joe’s side of the story and wait and see who wound up being right. Most of Girardi’s critics down the stretch were so obsessed with each individual move that they completely missed the big picture, as you discussed.
I read this the other day it’s good to see someone put it on TYU and it’s also good to see someone actually give Girardi credit for being a good manager, people rip the guy for things has no control over and rip the guy for the right moves and the wrong moves I’m not saying what he does is always right but he can’t be as wrong as everyone else makes him out to be.
Joe is a great players manager and finds a way to get everybody from the last guy out of the pen to the last guy off the bench playing and make them feel like they are contributing to a great team, something which Torre gets no credit for in my book and if anything he openly divided the club house on several occasions. He may over manage a game at times and sometimes he goes a little too by the numbers but overall I would rather have Girardi over many of the replacements out their because he keeps guys into the game and feeling like a part of a team.
I very much agree with this comment. He isn’t perfect, but he’s very god and there are no real improvements out there.
Girardi played it smart and played it correctly.He protected Hughes future, got his players reasonably healthy, found out who could pitch and who couldn’t and is in a position to make another run.
Only disappointment is Joba. Frankly, I think he needs to be a starter next season.If he can’t make it next year as a starter, or even if he can and looks good, time to trade him.Create some value and get rid of him.
I’ll take the other side of the argument here.
“I felt at the time that Joe was making the right move…while losing the division cost the Yankees one home game for the upcoming ALCS, it also ensured that they would face the inferior potential opponent in the ALDS.”
That’s giving Joe Girardi too much credit. I don’t believe he planned his wins and losses in lockstep with how the Twins were faring down the stretch. Remember, the Yankees were two bullpen implosions shy of winning the division so the notion that Girardi was targeting the Twins all along rings false to me.
There’s a bit of confirmation bias going on here. Had the Yankees lost to the Twins this past week instead of beaten them, how would resting his regulars have been proven as the correct decision? Unless I’m misreading what you’ve written, you’re arguing that Girardi’s decision was proven correct because the Yankees swept the Twins and are now rested for the ALCS.
That’s Wally’s argument. My argument has always been that Joe was correct all along, and that he was proven correct by having all his players healthy and fairly effective going into October (even before they played the ALDS) other than Pettitte, who he didnt have much to do with. The series with Minny just illustrated what I had been saying all along, that Joe had succeeded in keeping his aging team fresh into the postseason.
As for your first point, I agree that I made it seem like he was trying to play the Twins, which as you said, clearly is not true. Rather, he simply valued rest and prep over winning the division, in part because losing the division was not THAT bad an alternative, because the matchup with the Twins was favorable. So he wanted to win the division, but not at the expense of preparing for the playoffs, and the Twins not being a bad matchup was just icing.