Normally, I’m not one to want to fire a manager mid-season, let alone mid-playoffs, but this year I would honestly consider making an exception. Now I know, I know he won a world series last year. But we’re not Detroit fans, we are fans of the New York Yankees! I realize that if everything went exactly right, the Yankees could still have lost this series. I realize that the Rangers are probably better than the Yankees as a sum of its parts than the Yankees.
But Joe Girardi has mismanaged this series. Let’s do some simple math. I know you probably have to pitch Burnett for a game. I get it. However, you don’t waste Andy Pettitte, which is exactly what Joe did. You pitch Pettite in game two. Pitch Burnett against Lee. If Lee is penciled in for a win and Burnett for a loss, and you pitch one against the other, you are only netting one loss. The way that Girardi did it, his chances of netting two losses are extremely higher.
Girardi has done this of and on all year. Indeed, perhaps the greatest gripe against him his entire career is that he has over managed. He has over thought things. He has taken the simple and made it complex.
He fights against the baseball gods order of things. In baseball, the key is to take the complex and distill it down to the simple. Joe seems to have done the opposite again and again. Perhaps, he has angered said baseball gods. Perhaps, losing this series will be the Yankees penance. Whatever, at least Lee will look good in pinstripes next to Carl Crawford at a podium on the four letter word station sometime in a the not so distant future. Maybe Joe will get it right next year.
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