Is it Time for Joe Girardi to Go?

The first thing to keep in mind is that it's May. It's silly to panic in May, a traditional Boss move that indicates impatience and hysteria rather than thoughtful consideration.

Still.

The Yankees, now officially in last place (tied with the Red Sox, who are showing signs of waking up), haven't hit in a game since roughly Spring Training. Even Derek Jeter, who was doing an impression of Ted Williams for the first five weeks of the season, seems to be slowing down. Curtis Granderson appears to have forgotten what he learned from Kevin Long. Nick Swisher hurt himself and came back swinging at everything. Mark Teixiera has a cough and that has exacerbated his usual slow start.

A-Rod is... who IS that guy at third base, anyway? Oh, right. Eric Chavez.

The frustrating, exasperating quality of the last two weeks or so of Yankee games has led to despair among the fandom. Trade A-Rod! (To WHOM? Who's going to take that contract?) Trade Tex! (See previous comment, not to mention, then who's going to play first base?) Trade Russell Martin (okay, that one's starting to sound reasonable...)

But the fall guy for most underperforming teams is the manager, due to the oft-repeated axiom that "you can't fire all the players." This is true, but not the least bit helpful.

Should Joe Girardi be replaced as manager of the Yankees? Let's discuss:

Although it is far from the powerhouse we were hoping it would be, the starting rotation (especially with Andy Pettitte looking like Andy Pettitte) has not been the problem. The bullpen (except Freddie Garcia) has really not been the problem, despite devastating injuries to both David Robertson and, worst of all, Mariano Rivera. The defense has not been the problem.

Let's see: What does that leave us? Oh, yeah. 

The Yankees aren't hitting. And that's a sentence nobody expected to be writing until two weeks ago. The Yankees, with the most expensive, professional, accomplished lineup in the Major Leagues, aren't hitting? How is that possible?

And that's the $193-million-dollar question. The hit totals are down, the RISP numbers are downright embarrassing, and the Yankees appear to be getting shut out about every other night. It's almost like that David Ortiz jersey supposedly buried under the House that Money Built has taken three years for its curse to emerge.

Does the manager take the blame when a team simply doesn't score runs? More to the point: should the manager take the blame when a team doesn't score runs?

Let's face it: Joe Girardi is a decent manager whose strength is handling pitching. He is head and shoulders above the sainted Joe Torre at working a bullpen, and the fact that this year's pitching hasn't been awful might be a testimony to the way he's calmly managing the pitchers.

But dealing with star players--particularly veteran star players--who aren't performing up to their reputations is not Joe G.'s strong suit. When Jeter was struggling mightily last year, Girardi publicly suggested--and continues to suggest to this day--that the pressure of getting his 3000th hit was weighing on Jeter's mind. First of all, that's exactly what Jeter WOULDN'T want his manger to say, and second, it was more likely that the rehab from his leg injury, the dealing with Gary Denbo, and the return to his usual mechanics got Jeter out of his slide, because he'd been hitting before #3000 landed in the stands.

And if what the Yankees need now is a fire lit under them, this is probably not the guy to do it. Girardi is so even-keeled he barely seems awake at some of his postgame press conferences. If you ever have trouble sleeping, the Joe Girardi Show--pardon me, WB Mason Presents the Joe Girardi Show--on YES is an excellent alternative to Xanax.

The fact is, managers probably don't make as huge a difference as they'd like us to believe. Should the Yankees turn it around offensively? Of course they should. (That's probably the moment the pitching will begin to deteriorate, so be warned.) Will they do that no matter who the manager is? Assuming they don't go insane and hire someone as ignorant as I am to be the manager, sure.

Should Joe Girardi get the boot? No. Not in May. 

But it's possible what this situation is telling us is that the real catalyst and irreplaceable part of the Yankees offense is actually Brett Gardner.

Not Fair

This isn't the way Mariano Rivera deserves to go out.

For an athlete with this kind of dignity, this amount of class, someone who has never pounded his chest and tried to humiliate the opposition; for a guy who has spent the last 15+ years being the best there ever was at what he does without ever acting like he thought that was a given, this is unacceptable.

But then, when has the world of sports--or any other world, outside of a Hollywood movie--been fair?

Rivera, shagging flies in the outfield as he has done pretty much every other day of his ridiculously long and accomplished career, stepped wrong, hit the wall, and fell to the ground in clear agony, something the rest of the Yankees would surely understand once his diagnosis of an ACL tear and damage to his meniscus was revealed.

"Oh my god," Alex Rodriguez was saying, and you didn't have to be Curtis Pride to read his lips. "Oh my god." Would he have been that devastated if, say, Andruw Jones had hit the turf? Nothing against Jones, who seems like a very nice guy, but no. There are two people on the Yankees whose sudden absence would be this devastating, and the other is Derek Jeter, who at age almost-38 is now hitting .404 for the season.

Maybe CC Sabathia, too.

But it wasn't Jeter, it wasn't Sabathia, it wasn't Rodriguez and it wasn't Jones on that warning track. It was the 42-year-old closer, by his own broad hints playing in his last major league season. It was the player who is considered to be the key to those five World Series championships over the past 16 years. It was a man who believes his ability to throw the cut fastball better than anyone else in history is literally a gift from the heavens.

By all accounts, Mariano Rivera is the greatest gentleman in baseball. His talent, which is impossible to quantify, even in a sport that revels in arcane statistics, comes second to his grace and dignity. Nobody in baseball, no matter how much they loathe the Yankees, dislikes Mariano Rivera. He shows up at All-Star games and shows the competing pitchers how he throws his signature pitch. He mentors young relief pitchers, good and bad, in the Yankee bullpen, not just in mechanics or technique, but in how to carry oneself in the spotlight of New York sports, something Rivera has done just about as well as anyone in history.

Yankee fans have always been aware that there would come a day when that bullpen door would open, but there would be no "Enter Sandman" and there would be no Number 42 trotting out to the pitching mound, a picture of calm in the eye of the hurricane, assuring us all that everything was under control. Mariano Rivera was here.

We just didn't know it would come this abruptly. We thought there would be that victory lap around the league, opposing fans showering their admiration, deservedly, down on Rivera as they did for departing stars like Cal Ripken Jr. That won't happen now, unless Rivera decides against all odds that he'll rehab the knee (which will undoubtedly need surgery) and come back for that victory lap in 2013, at the age of 43, uncertain about his health.

If he does, will be be the "real" Mariano Rivera, or one simply going through the motions? Nah. Rivera has never been about Rivera. If he can't compete at the same level he has--an astounding one--throughout his career, he won't embarrass himself and diminish his team just for accolades. At a thickly emotional press conference after last night's game, the closer, who might otherwise have been on a plane to New York to see to his painful injury, said he would stay with the team in Kansas City "to make sure the guys are all right."

This just isn't fair.