Yankee Fans Nervously Anticipate Life Without Torre

Starting last week, I've been traveling around the eastern seaboard as part of a book tour, which means a little bit of book signing interspersed with answering a great many questions from journalists and radio and TV hosts, not to mention the kind of fan who will drag himself out to a bookstore on a work night to talk baseball with a complete stranger. As you might guess, the level of preparation on the part of the questioner varies greatly, but no matter who is asking, I can count on hearing this: "How do you think Joe Girardi is going to do?"

At one stop, this was phrased as "Do you think the Yankees will survive without Joe Torre?" which seemed to imply that some possibly fatal event might await the team without the guiding hand of the old master. One was reminded of the feelings of disorientation that supposedly gripped some Americans after the sudden (though not wholly unexpected) death of President Roosevelt in April, 1945 — not because the president or his policies had universal approval but because, with almost 13 years in office, he was the only president that many had ever known. Joe Torre, the reassuring manager of the Yankees from fall of 1995, when he was hired, to the fall of 2007, when he and the club parted ways, had become the FDR of New York baseball — sometimes effective, sometimes not; sometimes wise, sometimes misguided — but as familiar and dependable as a piece of old furniture. When Torre went, it was as if God had moved the refrigerator.

Having in some cases gone from cradle to college with Torre, or from callow youth to marriage and parenthood with Torre, his moves fit like a glove, even if they weren't always right. Girardi, having spent most of his major league career in Chicago and New York, is miscast as the provincial Harry Truman in this scenario, but he is being greeted with a serious case of nerves nonetheless. What if he's a humorless disciplinarian who alienates his team? (Could be, but frustration probably won't take hold until next year if he wins now.) What if he burns out his young pitching stars? (A better question is, given the composition of the pitching staff, what choice does he really have?) What if he's a crazy activist manager who bunts the power-hitting Yankees out of their biggest rallies?

In the latter case, at least, some evidence exists that Girardi has more common sense in this regard than Torre did. Here's a question for you: Who had more sacrifice bunts by position players (that is, from non-pitchers) in 2006? Torre's Yankees or Girardi's Marlins? The answer is actually the Marlins, but not by a lot — the Marlins led the Yankees by just seven bunts, 40–33. Exactly half of these were executed by Alfredo Amezaga (seven), not a real hitter; Wes Helms (six), a hitter useful in distinctly limited situations, and Dan Uggla (seven), who did turn out to be a good hitter — but Girardi couldn't have known that for certain at the beginning of the season, when the second baseman was an unheralded rookie liberated from the ambivalent Diamondbacks. In other words, the players who bunted were the ones whose at bats were likely to be thrown away anyway.

In contrast, Torre's top bunters in 2006 were Miguel Cairo (five), an unjustly celebrated player who Torre would plug into 81 games despite .239AVG/.280 OBA/.320 SLG rates; Melky Cabrera (five) the soft-hitting rookie, and Derek Jeter (seven), who had been cleared to call his own bunt plays despite being one of the team's best and most consistent hitters. This was not as great a display of wastefulness as in 2004, when Jeter dropped down 16 sacrifices, the second-highest total in the league behind the relatively impotent Omar Vizquel, and then continued to bunt throughout the postseason, to the point that it can fairly be said that he sacrificed the Yankees out of the playoffs, but it was still a misapplication of resources by Jeter which Torre allowed to persist.

Worries about the fate of the young pitchers are more justified, though it is worth pointing out that young pitchers often get hurt regardless of how they're handled, and it's not clear that any reasonable court would convict Girardi of mishandling his Marlins charges, despite how many of them became injured. If he did, the temptation was understandable; Girardi was perhaps just two average starting pitchers short of taking a team that had been completely discounted and making a serious run at the wild card. He was like a desperate gambler trying to win a hand of poker by pretending a pair of threes was a full house.

Given the presence of the world-champion Red Sox in the American League East and the unsettled nature of his own pitching staff, from untested starting rotation to unknown middle relievers, Girardi may find himself in a very similar predicament in 2008. It won't be at all surprising if he's tempted to push again, with predictable consequences.

Mr. Goldman is the author of "Forging Genius," a biography of Casey Stengel.