Torre Seems Terrified of Changing Ways

When confronted by a failure of leadership, there’s never a wrong time to make a change. Though “Don’t change horses in midstream” has been a popular argument for retaining incumbents going back to FDR, the fact is that if the horse is showing signs of being swept away from the current, it’s wiser to find another mount. In baseball, managers are fired all the time — sometimes, even when their team is winning.Joe Torre’s team is winning right now and, given the schedule and the talent on hand, can be expected to continue to win with some regularity over the remainder of the season, but what is not certain is that the Yankees have the right man who can help them bridge the current gap between the Yankees and the wild card leaders. Especially considering that it was this same manager who did so much to create that gap, and place the American League East lead firmly and likely permanently in the hands of the Red Sox.The changes wrought by the Yankees on July 31, the deletion of Scott Proctor, the addition of Wilson Betemit, the return of Edwar Ramirez to the bullpen, as well as the imminent return of Jason Giambi, and the seemingly inevitable promotion of Joba Chamberlain provoke a large number of uncomfortable questions, the main one being that though Brian Cashman has furnished Torre with a new set of tools, if he won’t use them, what was the point of the entire exercise?Torre has become spectacularly inflexible in his old age. He is terrified of the new and untested, especially in pitchers, but increasingly in position players as well. Mariano Rivera and Proctor were the only relievers established in the major leagues by Torre during his entire Yankees career. As Ramirez recently learned, if a reliever doesn’t have five years experience in the bigs, he will sit and sit until Torre finds the right “situation” to use him. Said situation is usually defined as a game in which the Yankees are leading or trailing by 38 or more runs. Meanwhile, pitchers like Kyle Farnsworth, who are incompetent but have longer résumés, pitch game after game, with Torre blithely telling the press that he really thinks that Farnsworth, apparently still trying to figure out what it is he does well at 31, has finally turned a corner. He said it again on Sunday, just before Farnsworth was lit up by the Orioles.Torre’s famous loyalty to his veterans almost certainly ensures that Betemit won’t play, despite the double credential of both being five years younger than Andy Phillips and having a better track record of major league success. This same loyalty threatens to send Melky Cabrera, the team’s only defensive standout, to the bench when the manager is forced to find at bats for Giambi and Johnny Damon. Damon has been hot lately, Giambi can be an offensive force if healthy, but Cabrera, having batted .317 AVG/.377 OBA/.475 SLG since the end of April, is one of the key reasons the Yankees were able to climb back into the race after their disastrous start. Damon may have rediscovered his stroke, but he’d have to discover the Fountain of Youth to play center field and throw the way Cabrera does. Cabrera is more a part of the team’s future than either Damon or Giambi, and that future has to be protected. And heaven help the Yankees if Doug Mientkiewicz ever comes off the disabled list. The team will snap back to its April form so fast that fans will feel like they should be preparing their income taxes.August 1 doesn’t seems like an intuitive time to make a change, but there is a rough precedent. In mid-July 1983, the Phillies were tied for first place in the National League East when manager Pat Corrales was sacked. Part of the complaint: Corrales’s insistence on sticking with underperforming veterans. The Phillies, 43–42 at the time of Corrales’s dismissal, went 47–30 under his replacement and won the division. Those same veterans weren’t thrown by the change; they responded to it.A ballplayer isn’t a ballplayer if he’s sitting on the bench. Babe Ruth would have been just another fat guy if he didn’t get a chance to play. Rivera was just a mediocre starting pitcher until Buck Showalter stumbled onto using him as a reliever in the 1995 playoffs and Torre followed through the next year. Managing isn’t only about knowing when to bunt and writing out a lineup card that has the fast guy at the top and a power hitter at cleanup. It’s about knowing which players can help you and which can’t. Torre no longer cares to try to figure that one out. If the new Yankees sit, Cashman should move quickly to find a manager who will use them.Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.

Torre Seems Terrified of Changing Ways

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