Book Comments (NYA) — Joe Girardi prefers a set lineup, but last year he had to scramble. In all previous seasons, his clubs ranked in the top three in percentage of plate appearances going to the main starters. (Sure, the Yankees have a lineup full of big names, but even the 2006 Marlins ranked third in the NL in this.) But in 2013, the Yankees ranked 13th, ahead of only the Mariners and Astros. Trying to evaluate Girardi is a little tricky. His teams get on base a lot, have power and are older than most. But then again, that would be the case for the Yankees regardless of who their manager is. It’s worth noting that many predicted the Yankees would have a flat rotten year due to injuries this year, but they made it over .500 despite playing in baseball’s toughest division. He’s also the guy that had an impressive crop of rookie performances with the 2006 Marlins. He gets the most out of his teams.

Book Comments (NYA) — Girardi showed some signs of strain as his team’s lead disappeared down the stretch, snapping at a heckler during a postgame press gaggle in August and inviting a beat writer who asked one too many questions about CC Sabathia’s health into his office for a closed-door shouting match in September. However, while his normally calm façade showed some cracks, Girardi held his team together despite the strain of injuries to prominent players and the Orioles’ improbable pursuit. In most respects, Girardi was a middle-of-the-pack tactical manager, doing little to earn either the admiration or the ire of backseat sabermetric skippers—despite the much-maligned binder he sometimes consults before moves, he’s not a stathead at heart. He did a good job of leveraging his relievers and swapping in arms to replace injured pitchers, but the team’s fossilized roster meant he didn’t have to concern himself with too many moving parts. The one respect in which he stood out was his use of pinch-hitters: the Yankees’ 129 just barely trailed first-place Tampa Bay’s 135 and more than doubled the third-place total of the Orioles. That was emblematic of Girardi’s dogged pursuit of the platoon advantage: The success of role players and situational relievers like Eric Chavez, Raul Ibanez, Cody Eppley, and Clay Rapada owed much to their manager’s scrupulous attention to matchups. One could argue that his handling of the lineup in October smacked of desperation, but passivity would have been just as unpopular, and unlikely to alter the outcome.

Book Comments (NYA) — Joe Girardi is one of the most competent managers in baseball, but that’s a double-edged compliment, for managing is a degraded profession. The problem is that rather than use the brain in his head, which is excellent, Girardi uses the one he keeps in his famous binder. That binder contains a sinister intelligence that overrides Girardi’s better instincts and forces him to adopt a foolish rigidity that requires him to make moves by meaningless small samples, use pitchers inflexibly according to roles established in spring training regardless of whether they have pitched up to those roles, bat Derek Jeter leadoff prior to the shortstop’s second-half surge, and keep his worst starter in the rotation despite a two-year slump. On this last point, he grew testy with reporters when asked repeatedly to explain the unexplainable—it was as if being Yankees manager requires one to take an oath saying, “I swear to protect and defend A.J. Burnett.” When Rafael Soriano struggled prior to going on the disabled list, Girardi said he had to keep using him in the eighth inning, “Because he’s my eighth-inning guy,” as if Girardi himself hadn’t conferred that role and could just as easily take it away. For a guy who is supposed to be running a team, Girardi is strangely handicapped by his own decisions. Still, he doesn’t waste an inordinate number of outs, has done well constructing a bullpen once he actually gets the right people into those roles, and gets into fewer self-created controversies than Ozzie Guillen. That just might be the best the world of managers has to offer the modern game.

Book Comments (NYA) — Girardi plays things close to the vest, which makes thinking along with his strategy very difficult. Why didn’t Andy Pettitte come back out for the seventh inning? Why didn’t Jorge Posada pinch-hit for Francisco Cervelli one run down in the eighth? Why didn’t Mariano Rivera come out to protect that lead? At these times, Girardi’s seeming passivity in the face of strategic opportunities can drive one mad, but after the dust settles, he usually discloses that heretofore unrevealed injuries prevented him from making each glaringly obvious move. Fair enough, Joe, but there were still too many times you sat on your hands, most often in deference to the Great Jeter. Long after it was clear that Jeter was in an intractable slump, Girardi hesitated to remove him from the leadoff spot, perhaps not wanting to face the inevitable media frenzy. Nor did he use his glove-only bench player Ramiro Pena as a late-inning substitute for Jeter. In both instances, Girardi abdicated rather than confront his entitled shortstop. The skipper also insisted that Granderson was not a platoon player long after it was obvious that he was, stuck with Chan Ho Park beyond all reason, and issued far too many intentional walks for a team that plays in the DH league. Against those failings you have his insight that Cano was ready to blossom and therefore deserved to be batted higher in the order than he had previously; his willingness to bat a power hitter such as Swisher or Granderson second in the order; and his generally adept handling of Mariano Rivera, which kept the pitcher effective and on the roster despite nagging injuries. He also blew just four—or five percent—of his starters' quality starts by pushing them too far, as compared to such luminaries as Charlie Manuel, Ron Washington, and Ozzie Guillen, all of whom sabotaged over 10 percent, or AL Manager of the Year Ron Gardenhire, who blew seven percent. Girardi is a unique character, an oft-confusing combination of rigidity and flexibility. He’s not perfect, but suggestions that he might be fired because the Yankees made an early exit from the playoffs were ludicrous. He’s among the best in the game today.

Book Comments (NYA) — If there was a positive to the disappointing year that was 2008, it was that Girardi, in many ways still a managing neophyte, got a chance to learn on the job. To his credit, he grew up a great deal. By 2009, the paranoia in dealing with the media and the reflexive dishonesty about injuries were gone, replaced by a sunnier public persona. During the regular season, Girardi was an unobtrusive strategist. With seven lefties and switch-hitters in the starting lineup, Girardi didn\'t have to think too hard about maintaining a platoon advantage on offense. He didn\'t indulge too much in one-run strategies, his one crutch being the hit-and-run. Girardi sometimes doesn\'t think far enough ahead, and his major league-leading use of pinch-runners sometimes came back to bite him when he found himself undermanned in late in games (a scenario played out with Freddy Guzman during the postseason). This same failure to think an inning ahead sometimes dogged his pitching moves as well, as he makes changes impulsively and ends up with unfavorable matchups. That said, he\'s been smart enough not to form attachments to his non-Rivera relievers, rebuilding the bullpen on the fly twice in two seasons, an impressive feat. He managed Rivera\'s workload carefully, going to the closer in the eighth inning more often than any other manager in baseball, yet eschewing the two-inning appearances to which Torre often resorted (though this changed in the postseason). Some of the old nervous tics returned in October as Girardi reacted to the stress of trying to win a championship, and he overmanaged the Yankees out of at least one game. Still, Girardi matured greatly from 2008 to 2009. His refusal to pick favorites and his facility in constructing pitching staffs marks him as one of the most promising young managers in the game.

Book Comments (NYA) — Girardi\'s inaugural season as Yankees manager can be summed up in one line: \"Good at organizing a bullpen, bad at dealing with the press.\" Simply put, Girardi had problems with honesty, often refusing to admit that a player was injured even when the general manager or the player himself was willing to confirm it. Clearly an intelligent student of baseball, Girardi often seemed to be bending under the pressure of his job, and the pointless falsehoods seemed to emanate from that insecurity. The nervousness was understandable—Girardi was about to go down in history as the man who landed the Yankees short of the playoffs for the first time since 1993, and he was following a tough act in Joe Torre. Yet, Torre\'s success was in large part due to his ability to defuse the tensions that surrounded the team, whereas Girardi seemed captured by them and even exacerbated them. This was a pity, because he has the makings of an excellent manager. Right off the bat, he did something Torre was unwilling or unable to do, turning to new or relatively unknown relievers. When several relievers among the team\'s Opening Day slate or became injured, Girardi was able to assemble an almost effective and almost entirely new pen outside of Mariano Rivera—who, coincidentally or not, had one of his best years for the new manager. Girardi was far less assertive with his lineup, letting Cano and Cabrera slump on endlessly, and playing Jose Molina even after the acquisition of Ivan Rodriguez. As an offensive manager it\'s clear that he would like to have a faster team; he had the club stealing as often as the roster would allow, and called for the hit-and-run more often than any manager in the league.