Joe Torre has for many years been lauded as an operational genius, mostly because it’s in the nature of things for a manager who’s won four World Series to be held up as a great leader. But it’s also because his tactical and strategic failings in everything from in-game management to setting up a sustainable bullpen rotation are evident to all, including the paid shills who work for the Yankees’ broadcast network.

It would be a lot more accurate to say that Torre is a manager of average strengths and weaknesses whose skill in dealing with organizational politics, handling egos, and dealing with the press make him particularly well-suited to his situation, and whose weaknesses in judging talent and defining roles for players who aren’t superstars make him particularly ill-suited to it. On balance, any manager with Torre’s record must be judged a success, and he’ll earn his plaque in Cooperstown one day, but he deserves a lot more blame for the Yankees’ various problems than he ever gets.

Just look at this weekend’s series against Oakland. In place of the injured Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui, Torre started Melky Cabrera and Bernie Williams, and in yesterday’s lineup found room for Bubba Crosby at the expense of Andy Phillips, who hasn’t hit a lick yet, but is twice as good a hitter as any of the Yankees’ corps of no-hit scrub outfielders.

This sort of thing isn’t that big a deal in an emergency like that the Yankees find themselves in, but it’s part of a broader pattern of baffling decisions on Torre’s part. Why does Miguel Cairo start over Phillips once a week at first? Why is Williams shoehorned into a lineup slot one way or another every day when it couldn’t be clearer that he’s done as a ballplayer? Who knows? These sorts of nonsensical decisions have always been handed down from Mt. Torre like holy writ, and the general reaction has been to shrug and say that they didn’t really matter.

The problem is that this year they do matter. The Yankees are in a five-way race with Boston, Toronto, Chicago, and Detroit for two playoff spots, and while the Cleveland Indians are below .500 right now, they’re likelier to end up making it a six-way race than to continue floundering.

In past years, when the Yankees’ only real race was against Boston, and both teams were essentially assured of playoff spots, Torre’s peculiarities and prejudices could be indulged without much real cost to the team. This year, that isn’t so, especially considering that the Yanks are mired in a dogfight despite having had one of the two best pitching staffs in the league to this point.

You’d have to be more than an optimist to expect that’s going to continue, which means the Yankees need to look forward to the rest of the season with the idea of improving – not merely sustaining – their offense to compensate for a near-certain decline on the other side of the ball.

This is where we get to the matter of Torre’s decision-making. I’m skeptical the Yanks will make any serious move to bolster the outfield, first because Matsui is expected back before the end of the season, and second because the Torre Yankees have never treated left field as a particularly important position. Matsui is basically the first regular Torre’s ever had there, and experiments like those involving Tony Womack and Chuck Knoblauch show that unlike, say, third base or right-handed set-up man, it’s just not a role the team considers vitally important.

This means the matter will basically be left up to Torre to resolve, but the problem is that in such situations, he never does. What we will almost certainly see is a four-way rotation through first base, designated hitter, center field, and left field, in which Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon will play every day and an unwieldy combination of Williams, Crosby, Cabrera, Cairo, and Phillips will get the rest of the playing time. This solution will do no good defensively, do little to encourage Cabrera’s development, and minimize the chance that the team might be able to make up for Matsui’s lost offense simply by chaining Williams to the bench and settling on a defined role for Phillips or another, similar player.

My best guess (I’ll spare you the math) is that over 100 games this arrangement will cost the Yankees about four wins, taking offense and defense into account, over simply sticking Cabrera in left field and playing Phillips at whichever of first or DH Giambi isn’t playing on any given day. That’s a huge number, especially in a tight race with so many quality teams, and all the more so because it’s in no way necessary given the talent on hand.

Joe Torre’s done a lot for the Yankees during the last decade, but there’s a reason why the team finds itself with six-way platoons every year, and it isn’t because of George Steinbrenner.