You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

[rsox]

There has been a lot of talk about how George Steinbrenner is placing all responsiblity for the Yankees struggles on Manager Joe Torre, the Yankees are 28-28, have lost 8 of their last 9 games and were swept by the Royals last week.

The Yankees are not hitting and their pitching has not been very good either (Randy Johnson has not had a 10 strikeout game this season). We know that the Yankees are going to try and make some moves, but will it help?.

So, since you can't fire the players (or the owner) who takes the fall?. If the Yankees don't make the playoffs, or have an early exit someone will be fired. will it be Joe Torre? or Brian Cashman? or both?.

I think it may be both. Thoughts?.

[TheMatrix31]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I think it's more of Cashman making some very bad decisions. No way he shouldve thrown that much money at Pavano and Wright. I dont know, it's still early so I'd still give them some time, but right now it's not looking good.

Joe Torre CANNOT be to blame. Remember, the guy has brought 4 World Series wins to the franchise in 9 years. Obviously he does something right.

[NYJets]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

Who should take the blame?




Of course, that's not going to happen.

Torre doesn't deserve the blame. It's not his fault we've had one consistent pitcher, a lot of struggles in the lineup, and at most 3 consistent relievers.

And I don't think Torre will get fired, though it wouldn't be shocking to see him resign at the end of the year if this continues.

I think Mel will get a lot of blame. Fair or not, when this many pitchers are struggling, he's going to get blamed.

Cashman does a decent job, but also needs to take some blame for some of the moves he's made. And this is the last year of his contract I believe, and I doubt he'll be back anyway.

[Vince]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I've always thought that for the most part, managing in Baseball was a figurehead job and you're only as good as your players. That's not saying I could go out there and be a great Major League manager (as I know that there's still a lot of work to be done) but too often, guys like Pena or Miley or McLendon are on the hot seat because their teams aren't producing. High level management expects managers to perform miracles when they only have mediocre players. As I said, you're only as good as your players in Baseball. And the Yanks have old-azz players and no farm so they must recycle other teams' old vets.

[nyisles16]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

you cant always blame the manager.. how about blaming Steinny himself? He only got RJ at a nice ripe old age, Pavano, who only had one winning season (last year), traded for Jeff Weaver (and trading him for Brown) & signed Giambi, who really hasnt produced like he did in Oakland (although we know why).. he goes after all these All Star types, never thinking what it does to the team chemistry.. sorry, cant blame Torre at all - he can only play the guys that are on his roster.

[elicoleman]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I place blame at Cashman and Steiny at this point. They made some very bad moves, although they looked great on paper.

[Kashanova]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

**** i blame jeter for at least two losses the guy had two chances to come thru and nada. he doesnt deserve to be captain

[kweiss]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I blame Cashman. The guy seems to have a knack for overpaying stars past their prime.

[SPTO]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

If this were a normal situation Torre would be getting most of the blame. He's very popular tho and this situation was pretty much handed to him. I think the blame lies squarely on Steinbrenner and Cashman so I could see Cashman getting canned before Torre.

[rsox]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

Lets face it, Steinbrenner will not assume any blame or responsibility for the Yankees woes so he is going to point the figure at someone. Mel Stottlemyer will likely be the first to go, and maybe he should be. If Cashman is at the end of his contract then i would not expect him to return next year, so that leaves Torre as the scape goat for the Yankees. Steinbrenner has said that he has given Torre the players to win and does not understand why they are not--obviously we all know the main problem is age, the average age on the Yankees is 34 (they have 9 players on their roster who are 37 or older). Age and inconsistantcy make it hard to win.

Harold Reynolds was talking about this on Baseball Tonight a few nights ago, he said that it would seem like the Manager is being setup to take the fall and said that people he had talked to do not believe that is true because Torre is owed $10 million over the next 3 years, Reynolds then went on to say that this is the Yankees. I doubt George would think twice about firing Torre just because he is owed so much money.

I don't want to see Torre fired, he is a class act. He deserves the benefit of the doubt but after watching the Red Sox pull off the biggest comeback in sports history and not delivering a championship since 2000 (it does not look too promising for this year) you have to think Torre is on the bubble.

[Misfit]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

According to Buster Olney, Cashman didn't even want to return for this season but the club picked up an option he had in his contract. With that said, I bet he leaves at the end of the season. Steinbrenner could take the opportunity to try and put some blame on him and paint a poor picture of Cashman but we'll see.

I think Torre could have assumed some blame last year for burning out his pen during the regular season and managing every game like it was a must win, this year im not so sure. I think he needs to pick a lineup and stay with it for some length of time, he tinkers far too much and we know how players like their routines. The only one he should have moved was Matsui, and yet that was the one guy he left alone for a long while. Otherwise, this is mostly the case of a 200 million dollar team that isn't worth 200 million dollars, and in that case most of the blame has to be put on the front office.

[DGetz]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I think it's more of Cashman making some very bad decisions. No way he shouldve thrown that much money at Pavano and Wright. I dont know, it's still early so I'd still give them some time, but right now it's not looking good.

Joe Torre CANNOT be to blame. Remember, the guy has brought 4 World Series wins to the franchise in 9 years. Obviously he does something right.

Cashman may have overpaid but he did so because George told him to. Cashman doesnt fulfill the GM role in a traditional sense of trying to build a team. Most of the time George just says he wanted a certain player or wants to get rid of a certain player and it's up to Cashman to make it happen.

I place the blame on George for going after aging high priced players without looking more than one year in to the future - he can invest in Johnson, Womack and Jaret Wright but not Beltran? It was bound to catch up with them sooner or later

[primo1]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

I doubt he'll be fired more like retired..hasn't Mel been on the verge of retiring for the last couple of years??

[dce1228]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

Who should be fired?? I don't know. I'd fire the yankee fans themselves. All this crap has happened before. Does no one remember the 1980s? You all love George when he's dolling out the green-backs for players but hate him when those players suck. Stop going to games and George will stop trying to buy a championship every year. Because, in the end, YOU CANNOT BUY CHAMPIONSHIPS.

Until as consumers the yankee fans demand that finances go towards a quality farm sytem and not signing the 'flavor of the month' free-agent, the yankee fans have no one to blame but themselves.

The yankees need to give to baseball and stop taking. Until then they truly, truly do suck. And suck in numerous ways.

[ehh]

Re: You can't fire the players, so who should take the fall?

It's Steinbrenner's fault mostly and partially Cashman's.

You can't go out and get star after star from other teams and expect them to have any type of chemistry. Plus, it doesn't help when these stars are in their 30's and past their prime.

You need role players on championship teams. Now we have a random 3B we plucked from Texas, a RF we grabbed from the NL, another OF from Japan. We no longer have the Scott Brosious, the Paul O'Neills, the Joe Girardi's. Then we grab arguably the best LHP of our generation, a good, relatively young RHP who just came off his best season in Florida. No more David Cone or Andy Pettitte. All these new guys were the stars of their prior teams. Now there all on the same team, looking around, waiting for someone else to pick up the slack, waiting for the "Yankee mystic" to win games for them instead of hard work.

So it's mostly George's fault for demanding Cashman to go out and get aging players, and Cashman's fault I guess for following through and overpaying for most of these guys.