NY Yankees set to Fire Joe Torre

[some-dude]

Reported on ESPN who reports the news is from the NY Daily News...hes gonna supposedly be replaced by Lou Pinella......dayum.

[nashtymavsfan13]

Wow! I saw another article saying that there would be a lot of changes this offseason, but why Torre? I guess his time has just passed, but he seemed like he was a great coach for a very long time.

[mary]

George didn't invite him over for dinner?

Interested?

[chumdawg]

Is Big Lou not still coaching the Mariners? Damn.

Too bad for Joe. Too bad that his team is an ill mix of odd-fitting parts and generally sucks.

Bring him here, and watch the division titles roll in.

[nashtymavsfan13]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

Bring him here, and watch the division titles roll in.

Do you think it could happen? I think it's possible.

[Flacolaco]

I tend to disagree with that.....

bring in someone new...and young, I say.

[nashtymavsfan13]

Bronx bombshell

By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
October 7, 2006

DETROIT – Alex Rodriguez cannot come back to the New York Yankees next season. Neither can Joe Torre. Not after the Yankees doddered their way to another paper championship and real-life choke.

It is time for a change in New York, and though the scapegoating will start with Rodriguez, the Yankees must realize it does not end there. Disposing of Rodriguez – whose vacation to the Bermuda Triangle during the postseason now is officially a trend – is a necessary fix. Jettisoning Torre – manager for the four Yankees championships between 1996 and 2000, and now the manager for a pair of $200 million teams that couldn’t even crack the American League – is an emotionally trying, yet ultimately prudent, business decision.

No longer is talent enough to save Rodriguez’s career in New York. Torre regarded him enough to drop him and his $252 million contract to the No. 8 spot in the Yankees’ lineup for their 8-3 loss Saturday against wild-card Detroit, which after a 3-1 series victory surges into the AL Championship Series against Oakland.

At the same time, Torre’s tinkering with a lineup that scored the most runs in baseball this year was a microcosm of the neuroses he showed throughout the series and an indication that, perhaps, he no longer is the best-suited person to manage the Yankees. He hit Rodriguez sixth, fourth and eighth in the series’ final three games and benched Gary Sheffield in Game 3 and Jason Giambi in Game 4. Meanwhile, Detroit manager Jim Leyland stuck with what had worked all season and saw his every move go to script as Torre’s team, undone by its bats, flopped like a fish gone ashore.

“Plain and simple, they dominated us,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not like we lost by one run or two runs. They absolutely kicked our ass.”

An apropos culmination, certainly, for a year in which Rodriguez struggled to handle the rigors of New York and didn’t acquit himself in the playoffs, either. He finished this series 1 for 11, his mark a lonely single, and threw away a routine ground ball for good measure. After the season-long skirmish with himself, Rodriguez said he felt relaxed in the postseason. If by relaxed he meant carrying himself like somebody was trying to extricate his spleen with a butter knife, yes, sir, did he ever.

However happy a face Rodriguez tried to wear following Saturday’s loss, the blue-hued circles under his eyes gave him the expression of a tired fighter. Rodriguez tried to say the right things. The Yankees fought and he was proud, and he wanted to come back to New York next season.

Whether he does is almost completely up to Rodriguez. He has a no-trade clause in his contract, which runs for another four seasons. Why he wants to stay with a team that clearly doesn’t want him – batting Rodriguez eighth was no accident, nor were the cluster bombs thrown at Rodriguez by Torre and Jason Giambi in the Sports Illustrated piece that illuminated the divide in the Yankees’ clubhouse – is as much a testament to Rodriguez’s fear of the failure label forever chasing him as it is proof that he really does believe he’ll right himself.

“My commitment is 100 percent unconditional,” Rodriguez said. “I want to be a Yankee. I don’t want to go anywhere. And I can’t be more clear. I hope they don’t want to trade me because I don’t want to go anywhere.

“If they’re dying to get me out of here … I hope not.”

The official word, from general manager Brian Cashman, on whether the Yankees support Rodriguez.

“Yes,” Cashman said.

And in the future?

“Yep.”

Cashman did not expound. He was headed off to assess the damage, though he already had done it with a firm mandate: “This is going to be a long winter.”

It could, in fact, rival the winter of 2004, when Cashman dealt with the fallout of the Yankees’ collapse in the ALCS against Boston. Amid thoughts Torre might bolt New York, Cashman, in April 2004, had rewarded Torre with a three-year contract extension for $19.2 million that ends after the 2007 season – and no sooner, if Cashman has his say.

“No,” Cashman said. “Obviously, I have people above me. But the question’s coming to me so I’m answering it how I see it.”

In this case, it might not matter. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner could sharpen his ax one final time before handing off the franchise to his son-in-law, Steve Swindal. Though his health has deteriorated and Steinbrenner’s public proclamations are now limited to one-sentence responses with little context or substance, he knows the difference between winning and losing, and he knows the Yankees have done plenty more of the latter recently.

The attitude is pervasive. Torre has had six years to change it and hasn’t, and for all the emotion tied to his history, Torre’s present is substandard.

New York’s brass made a conscientious decision to buy a team of superstars, chemistry be damned, and handed them over to Torre expecting him to shift his formula and make it work. It was a reasonable expectation that turns out to have a flaw: Torre succeeds with the right players – the types that populated his championship teams – and while he can handle a pack of alpha dogs, he does not thrive with it.

He knew Sheffield, returning from injury, would turn into a nuisance if he sat during the playoffs, and Torre shifted him to first base, a position he mangled during the Detroit series. Instead of considering using starter Chien-Ming Wang on three days’ rest for Game 4, Torre stuck with Jaret Wright, whose best effort would have been mediocre and actual effort was dreadful.

When Torre went to fetch Wright after 2 2/3 innings, he walked back to the dugout with his head hanging. The crowd of 43,126 waved orange towels at Torre, though white flags might have been more fitting.

“What can you do?” Yankees closer Mariano Rivera said. “I don’t worry at all. He did tremendous this year. He did real good. The money cannot do the job that we have to do. We’ve got to do our job and, simply, we didn’t do it.”

Nor does the fact that Torre led the Yankees to a 97-win season and the best record in baseball mean he did his job, which is to win championships. And therein lies the problem: The Yankees, so saddled with terrible contracts such as Giambi’s and Randy Johnson’s and Carl Pavano’s and Wright’s, and so bereft of young pitching aside from Wang and the soon-arriving Phil Hughes, can’t blow up the team. By proxy, they must change who’s in charge.

It’s not you, the Yankees mean to say. It’s me.

There are good options to replace Torre. Joe Girardi won three rings with the Yankees as a player and coached under Torre before leading Florida to its surprising 2006 season, though he may be too much like Torre for his own good – and that is a first, because Torre, for all of his inadequacies with these Yankees, has proven himself among the game’s best.

Lou Piniella is another choice, once a Yankees player, twice a Yankees manager and a success everywhere but Tampa Bay, and that’s no sin.

Around the clubhouse, players were mum on what the offseason will hold, with Derek Jeter, the captain, speaking for all: “Not worried about changes right now.”

And still, it would be naïve to deny the Yankees do need changes, for the short and long term. There is no worse feeling than helplessness, and it was on display with two outs in the ninth inning. With Robinson Cano at the plate and the season on the line, Alex Rodriguez stood in the on-deck circle, looking helpless, and Joe Torre sat in the dugout, feeling helpless, emotions woven together in what might have been their last moments spent in a New York Yankees uniform.

[Male30Dan]

Yup... I called it... I am sure he won't be back.

[dalmations202]

Torre would be a great choice for Texas. I doubt it happening, but it would be a great move.

[fluid.forty.one]

I love Lou, hope he gets the job.

[fluid.forty.one]

ESPN just said Torre is staying

[Five-ofan]

coaching in baseball is so vastly overrated.

[kg_veteran]

Please bring Joe to Texas.

[kg_veteran]

BTW, ESPN is now reporting that the Boss will keep Torre.

[dalmations202]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Please bring Joe to Texas.

Torre is like quality starting pitching..........just not destine to end up in Texas. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Flacolaco]

Originally Posted by Five-ofan

coaching in baseball is so vastly overrated.

Swish!!!!

[#1MavsFan]

Originally Posted by Five-ofan

coaching in baseball is so vastly overrated.

I think it's vastly underrated, seriously. They do so much in spring training, and it's all overlooked. In a lot of instances they are more of a teacher than an actual coach but they do have tough decisions to make year around. Do you bring up some new prospects to the big league or put it off? Do you mess with your rotation or let it stand? Theres a lot of things that managers have to do from spring training to the end of the playoffs.

[nashtymavsfan13]

Torre remaining as manager of Yankees

By RONALD BLUM, AP Baseball Writer
October 10, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Joe Torre will remain as manager of the New York Yankees, finally getting the word from owner George Steinbrenner after the team's surprise elimination from the playoffs last weekend.

Torre spoke with Steinbrenner on the telephone Tuesday, shortly before he walked into the interview room at Yankee Stadium and made the announcement.

"He gave me his support," Torre said. "I'm just pleased I'm able to stay on and do this."

Torre didn't go into detail about his conversations with Steinbrenner.

But Steinbrenner, in a statement issued through spokesman Howard Rubenstein, said he told Torre: "'You're back for the year. I expect a great deal from you and the entire team. I have high expectations, and I want to see enthusiasm, a fighting spirit and a team that works together. Responsibility is yours, Joe, and all of the Yankees.'

"Yes, I am deeply disappointed about our loss this year," Steinbrenner added. "We have to do better, and I deeply want a championship. It's about time."

Torre said he also spoke to Steinbrenner on Monday "for probably 15, 20 minutes, and we discussed a lot of things: the team, what we do from here and things like that."

After the Yankees were eliminated by the Detroit Tigers -- the second straight time they were gone in the first round -- there was much speculation about what Steinbrenner would do with his 66-year-old manager.

First he was out; then he was in.

Torre has led the Yankees to 11 consecutive playoff berths and nine AL East titles in a row. Lou Piniella, who served two terms as Yankees manager in the 1980s, was viewed as the most likely replacement.

Torre didn't make any public statements Sunday or Monday as camera crews camped outside his home in suburban Westchester.

"I thought I had the cure for cancer or something," Torre said.

While the Yankees won four World Series titles in Torre's first five seasons, they haven't won any since 2000, angering the demanding Steinbrenner. They haven't even reached the World Series since 2003.

"He requires a lot. He expects a lot. We know that," Torre said. "You can't pick and choose the parts you like about working for George Steinbrenner. You have to understand the whole package. He requires us to be the best team out there and to be able to perform like it."

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said team executives gave Steinbrenner their opinions on Torre.

"I believe he is the right man for this job at this point in time," Cashman said.

Torre, hired after the 1995 season, has one year remaining on his contract. He said he wasn't sure whether he wanted to manage beyond 2007.

Late in the season and during the playoffs, he made several controversial decisions. He moved right fielder Gary Sheffield to first base when he returned from wrist surgery, and put Hideki Matsui back in left in place of Melky Cabrera when Matsui came back from a broken wrist.

The most debated decision was when he dropped Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player at $252 million, to the No. 8 spot in the batting order for Saturday's season-ending 8-3 loss.

Rodriguez was repeatedly booed at Yankee Stadium this season, his third with New York.

"I want to believe that, yes, as far as I'm concerned, Alex Rodriguez is one of the important pieces to this puzzle here," Torre said.

With 1,973 regular-season wins, Torre is 10th on the career list and third among active managers behind Tony La Russa of the St. Louis Cardinals (2,297) and Bobby Cox (2,171) of the Atlanta Braves.

Torre has the longest uninterrupted term for a Yankees manager since Casey Stengel held the job for 12 years from 1949-60. Under Torre, the Yankees have gone 1,079-699. He trails only Joe McCarthy (1,460) and Stengel (1,149) for victories among Yankees managers.

Notes

LHP Randy Johnson is likely to have surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back, Cashman said, which would put him slightly behind for spring training. First baseman Jason Giambi probably will have surgery on a torn ligament in his left wrist, and backup 1B Andy Phillips will have surgery to repair torn knee cartilage. Cashman also said the Yankees will meet with RHP Carl Pavano and the players' association to discuss discipline for Pavano's decision to hide a rib injury from a car crash for several weeks.

[nashtymavsfan13]

Cashman: Yankees not looking to trade A-Rod

By RONALD BLUM, AP Baseball Writer
October 10, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Joe Torre will be back with the New York Yankees and it looks as though A-Rod will be, too.

General manager Brian Cashman said the team had no intention of trading Alex Rodriguez, who failed to drive in a run in the playoffs for the second straight year and was dropped to eighth in the batting order.

"I fully expect him to be here," Cashman said Tuesday. "We're going to figure this thing out together."

Earlier, Torre said he would return as manager for his 12th season.

Rodriguez, who has a no-trade clause in his contract, struggled during his third season with the Yankees and was booed throughout the year by fans. Cashman revealed that teams inquired about Rodriguez's availability up until the July 31 deadline to make trades without waivers.

"The first one I got hit on was late May, I think, or early June and then it got real heavy in the deadline period," Cashman said.

Rodriguez, the reigning AL MVP, hit .290 with 35 homers and 121 RBIs, and his 24 errors were the most among AL third basemen. He went 1-for-14 (.071) in the first-round playoff loss to Detroit and is 4-for-41 (.098) with no RBIs in his last 12 postseason games.