Yankees, and Maybe Torre, Are Out

On XM Radio's afternoon baseball show yesterday — before the Cleveland Indians defeated the Yankees 6–4, sending them home in four games in the first round of the playoffs — failed major league manager-cum-talking head Kevin Kennedy was translating George Steinbrenner's latest win-or-else edict to Joe Torre. Mr. Steinbrenner, Mr. Kennedy believed, was not raging against the darkness, nor channeling (perhaps for the last time) the worst angels of his impetuous middle age. Mr. Kennedy explained that the Old Boss was not merely spouting off, but engaged in a carefully planned stratagem of motivation to get them to win in these playoffs. It had, after all, worked for him before.

The obvious questions include "when?" and "with who?" The Yankees have won when they had the horses. In the many seasons in which Steinbrenner — de facto general manager — spent his money without getting good value for it, they have not. Changing managers did not avail him. Bluster moved the team not an inch closer to a pennant, and on some occasions, it demonstrably had the opposite effect. Winning in baseball is about mustering as much talent as you can and having a smattering of good luck along the way. The 2007 Yankees were clearly talented, but just as clearly deficient in a number of areas. Steinbrenner had just over a year since the Yankees lost their last postseason series to give his advice and consent to the roster, to have his say in the construction of his team, and to notice the fragile starting rotation and the miserable bullpen. If he is indeed in "full control" (as he asserted to Ian O'Connor of the Bergen Record), then he is also fully complicit. For him to emerge from his Tampa exile at this late date, and attempt to lay the ultimate result at the feet of his subordinates is not exhortation but cowardice.

Winning a major league championship is a difficult business. All the great Yankees teams lost postseason series. To purge one's organization of talented baseball men of longstanding after every playoff or World Series loss is a self-defeating act of petulance that denies the difficulty of the long baseball season and postseason.

That is not to say that the management below Steinbrenner executed flawlessly. In deep denial of Roger Clemens's inability to pitch, they held Phil Hughes out of the starting rotation, and then eliminated the possibility of his starting with a trash-time relief appearance in Game 1. Thus, a potential 95-pitch start by Hughes was squandered, and instead split over two games, only one of them meaningful.

Simultaneously, the decision to leave Ron Villone off of the initial roster proved to be a major miscalculation. The Indians have three key hitters — Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, and Grady Sizemore — who are vulnerable to southpaw pitchers. Villone is no Rafael Perez, the Indians' reliever who held opposing lefthanders to a .145 average. But given the mediocrity of Yankees' relievers after Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera, they might as well have played the percentages. When Luis Vizcaino gave up the winning hit to Hafner in Game 2, that was Villone's spot. Yesterday's decision to replace Clemens on the roster with Villone was entirely reasonable, but demonstrates just how cloudy Joe Torre, Brian Cashman, and their various staff members were in their planning: Either Villone was worth using, or he wasn't.

That loss put the Yankees on the verge of elimination and ultimately triggered the decision to use Chien-Ming Wang on short rest in Game 4. Contrast this with Eric Wedge's decision to pitch Paul Byrd in Game 4, rather than push C. C. Sabathia forward. Wedge was playing with the house's money; the Yankees didn't have that luxury. Wang's start was abortively brief, leading to what for all intents and purposes was a Mike Mussina start, something in no way desirable, given the way the Moose pitched this season — but preferable to the pathetic sight of a Hall of Famer crumbling under the weight of years. The Yankees could have spared themselves that by scheduling Hughes over Clemens in the first place, and then following him with Mussina, or still using Wang on short rest.

These calls were borne out of shortcomings that are years old. The rotation has been a patchwork since four spots were turned over after the 2003 season. There are bridges in Minnesota more reliable than those the Yankees have tried to build to Rivera. Is Jason Giambi a first baseman, or a designated hitter? The Yankees have been trying for years to ensure the latter, but have been completely ineffectual in making it so.

In an age of free agent scarcity, many of these problems might have been headed off by a more robust farm system. But until very recently, the Yankees were the worst drafting team in baseball. The farm system has recently begun to flower, but too late to spare the team the ravages of Carl Pavano et al, signings that handicap the Yankees to this day.

If we take Steinbrenner at his word, he sanctioned these signings and the desertification of his farm system that required them. Yet, just as there is no "I" in "team," there is no "we" in Yankees — not where the Old Boss is concerned, the only absolute dictator in history who can be fully in control and yet completely devoid of responsibility. Win or lose, there is something distasteful in that — and maybe that is why, in more than 30 years under this owner, the Yankees have lost so much more often than they have won.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of "Forging Genius," a biography of Casey Stengel.