Our long national nightmare is over

After all that waiting, the news is starting to come fast. Right on the heels of the news that Alex Rodriguez is a narcissitic idiot comes word that the Yankees have decided to hire Joe Girardi as manager. Technically they're still negotiating, but I doubt it'll take long to finalize the deal. After all, Girardi is going to have to get right to work and find himself some coaches. Don Mattingly, who is disappointed at not getting the job, has already announced that he won't be returning next season. Meanwhile, Larry Bowa has been offered a job as the third base coach in Seattle, and Ron Guidry will likely be getting the axe soon. This would leave Girardi with a staff that consists of first base coach Tony Pena, hitting coach Kevin Long and bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan. Right now, the only candidate whose name I've heard bandied about is Dave Eiland, the pitching coach for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees who helped Phil Hughes so much in September. Other than that, I think the field's wide open.

As for Girardi himself, I think it's a good decision by Brian Cashman and the Steinbrenners. I've certainly written about his qualifications enough, but that's not what really impressed me about their choice. For the past few seasons, Don Mattingly has been the presumed heir to Joe Torre's throne. There really was no question that the Yankees were grooming him for the role, and when Torre left it really seemed like it was Mattingly's job to lose. However, the Yankees sat down with their candidates and allowed themselves to be impressed by Girardi, who was reportedly fantastic in his interview. As I said, it seemed like the job was Mattingly's to lose, but Girardi went ahead and won it anyway. The reason he was able to wasn't because Mattingly did anything wrong, but because the Yankee brass kept their minds open, and you have to give them a lot of credit for that.

After the sour notes of the departures of Joe Torre and Alex Rodriguez, it's truly refreshing to have good news coming out of Tampa and I'm hoping to hear more soon. Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte all said that Joe Torre's departure would impact their decisions. I hope that the arrival of the catcher who helped them so much in their younger days will also make an impact.

The final countdown

The word is that the Yankees will announce their new manager either today or tomorrow. Right now the short list seems to consist of Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi and Tony Pena. I wrote about Mattingly and Girardi before, but Pena's name came up later, so I'll share my thoughts about him now.

Pena's resume is very similar to Girardi's. They're both former catchers who had very successful rookie seasons as a major league manager, leading mediocre teams with limited payrolls to surprisingly strong seasons. They then followed that rookie season by getting fired in the next one. Unlike Girardi, however, Pena was not fired because of a conflict with ownership. Instead, he lost his job over the trivial matter of losing 104 games. I'm not sure what that says about his managerial skills. On one hand the Royals were a pretty bad team, and you have to give him a lot of credit for bringing the team their first winning season since 1994, a feat they have yet to replicate. On the other hand, 104 losses is one of the worst totals in baseball history, and no matter how bad his players were, he has to take some of the blame.

So how can we make any kind of guess as to his managerial skills? I decided to go back to his experiences as the manager of the Aguilas Cibaenas in the Dominican Winter League. in three seasons he led the team to two league championships and a Carribean Series title. Of course managing a great team in Santiago de los Caballeros is very different from doing it in New York, but it's all we have to go on.

Similarly, we don't know much about how he'd be able to handle the media or his players. Neither of his previous managerial positions required him to face an aggressive media or deal with star players and their egos. All we can say is that he's had two seasons to watch Joe Torre do those things better than anyone, and that he's known to be a terribly nice guy.

In the end, I see the three candidates as breaking down like this. All three of them are classy guys who conduct themselves with the kind of professionalism that you'd expect from anyone who worked under Joe Torre. Girardi and Pena both have had success as managers, while Mattingly has had no experience whatsoever. Mattingly, as a former Yankee star and captain, is the only one who has ever had the spotlight of New York upon him and he's dealt with it well. All three are fine candidates, but I'd go with Mattingly and his media experience. The Yankees' are depending heavily on their young pitching, and the next manager is going to have to protect them from the media and teach them about how to deal with New York. While I've no doubt that all three would be willing to throw themselves in front of the proverbial bus for these kids, Mattingly's probably the one whose best equipped to survive it.

Of course two weeks ago I said that Girardi would be the best choice. That has less to do with me being indecisive and more to do with just how good these candidates are. Considering how badly the Yankee brass handled the end of the Joe Torre era, I'm glad to see that they're in a situation where there is no bad choice for them to make.

Let the speculation begin

So that's that for the Yankees' 2007 season. Last night's defeat is a little too fresh for me to do a look back at what went wrong and what went right in the season, so I'm going to place my focus on the future for now. The big story for the future right now is, of course, who will be the manager next season. It seems almost certain that it won't be Joe Torre. The only real question about that is whether he will announce that he's not coming back, or whether the team announces that they're not re-signing him.

As for his replacement, Peter Abraham is reporting that the short list consists of Tony La Russa, Bobby Valentine, Buck Showalter, Joe Girardi and Don Mattingly. Its a pretty weird list to me, consisting of two guys who'd be good picks, and two who I don't think would work out, and one who would be an absolute disaster. Let's go over them individually.

The disaster is Tony La Russa. One of the biggest challenges of being manager in New York is dealing with the media, something at which La Russa is incredibly bad. This is a guy who nearly got into a fistfight with a reporter in St. Louis. I really can't imagine that he'd make it through spring training with the New York media without having to serve jail time.

Then there's his actual managerial style. La Russa really seems to believe he's some kind of genius, and makes all sorts of wacky little moves to prove it, not caring about how it might affect his players. In his book Three Nights in August, journalist Buzz Bissinger starts with a story about one of La Russa's more insane decisions. Albert Pujols, who is as valuable to the Cardinals as a player can possibly be, has an arm injury which allows him to swing a bat, but not throw a ball. A doctor has informed La Russa that throwing a ball could result in a career ending injury for Pujols. Any sane man would bench Pujols until he was well enough to play, but La Russa decided he had a better idea. He played Pujols in left field and told him to just underhand the ball to the shortstop if he has to field a ball. This is not a man you want to entrust a team to.

I'm actually a fan of Bobby Valentine's. I think he's a smart man who amuses with some wacky antics. However, those wacky antics are a lot funnier when they're coming out of someone else's clubhouse. He's just not a good fit for the Yankees.

Buck Showalter is the other guy who's a perfectly decent manager, but wouldn't fit in with the Yankees. I'm actually surprised that he's even being considered for the job, or at least reported to be considered, in light of his acrimonious relationship with George Steinbrenner. Managing the Boss is as big a part of the job as managing the team, and Showalter just can't do it.

Joe Girardi, I think, would make a good pick. As the manager of the Marlins in 2006, he did a very nice job in bringing a team with the lowest payroll in the majors into playoff contention. Granted, he didn't have a good relationship with the team's owner, Jeffrey Loria, which is probably what got him fired. Loria, however, is a very different kind of owner from Steinbrenner. Where Steinbrenner can be an ass because of his obsession with winning, Loria is an ass who is obsessed with making money without regard to any kind of ethics or the law. I could write a whole piece about this, but I'll just say that Girardi understands proffesionalism, and I think would fit in with the Yankees as a manager as well as he did as a player.

Finally, there's the obvious choice; Donnie Baseball. He's certainly proven that he can handle the New York media, has a good relationship with the boss, and a lot of respect in the clubhouse. However, since he's never managed at any level, we've got no idea what his managerial skills are like. Heck, I couldn't even tell you if he's a good bench coach, since its never been clear to me what it is a bench coach does. However, he is, at least, a smart man who knows as much about baseball, especially the art of hitting, as anyone. His three seasons as the hitting coach were filled with so much success and praise that I was actually against making him the bench coach because I thought he was more valuable where he was (though, again, I have no idea what a bench coach does, so its possible that that was where he was more valuable).

Personally, I'd lean more towards Girardi. The Yankees are a team who will be relying on young pitching going forward, and I think a former catcher would have a leg up in helping them along. However, its a small leg up, and Mattingly would certainly be a fine choice. Just please don't let Tony La Russa anywhere near the Yankee clubhouse.