Here at Comerica Park, where the Yankees’ 2006 season concluded with Alex Rodriguez dropped to eighth in the team’s lineup, A-Rod learned Joe Torre — the man who made that infamous decision — still talks about their time together.
To which we say: Let it go, Joe.
...“He was concerned about putting numbers up,” Torre said of Rodriguez on the show. “And that really wasn’t what we [the Yankees] were all about, you know. We were all about, you know, winning games. That was the only statistic that was important for us.”
Rodriguez, presented with Torre’s words yesterday before the Yankees’ 9-4 victory over the Tigers — to which he contributed a ninth-inning, two-run homer — laughed and declined comment.
Which is what Torre should have done. First of all, because this is ancient history; it’s asked and answered, as they say in the courtroom. Second of all, because Torre probably should have been more forgiving of a guy who won two American League Most Valuable Player awards during the four years he managed him.
Third of all, and most important, because Torre isn’t just retired baseball royalty. He’s Major League Baseball’s executive vice president of baseball operations.
Repoz
Posted: June 02, 2012 at 06:26 AM |
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1. Weekly Journalist_ Posted: June 02, 2012 at 06:36 AM (#4146190)Don Mattingly, on the other hand, is awesome.
Torre: Outs win baseball games.
yeah, conflict of interest. It seems really odd to me that ESPN and MLB allow Magic Johnson to work NBA games.
Says the man who never won a pennant as a player.
Oh yeah. I went there.
On a (somewhat) more serious note, it seems like there's a tradition of Yankee managers resenting great players on their own team. Martin despised Reggie, while Casey treated both DiMaggio and Mantle like dirt (obviously Mantle much more so than DiMaggio, but that was because DiMaggio was already DIMAGGIO by the time Casey donned pinstripes). You'd think a manager would be ecstatic to have one of the best players in the game on his side; but maybe pinstripes changes their appreciation of such things.
DB
That said, I still maintain that one way for AROD to have changed the situation was to hit better than 3-for-29 over two postseasons. It's silly to blame a player for being outplayed, but it's also a fact he did nothing to help the team win those series. The way to cope with a demotion to 8th in the lineup is to prove the manager wrong.
Well, you do need to get the other team to make 27 of them if you want to win. More if the game goes into extra innings.
Has Arod ever complained about that lineup demotion? I know hundreds of others have decried Torre's ghastly crime, but I can't recall Rodriguez saying anything at all about it.
Torre is such a dinosaur that he stupidly used to use his CLOSER(TM) in tie playoff games and make him pitch more than one inning in some of those games. No one else was dumb enough to do that.
Thankfully we will never see that happen again in this more enlightened era. geesh.
I understand. My point was that for all the talk about the great injustice served on Arod about that incident, I've never seen any evidence he thought of it that way. Which is actually pretty consistent with him. For however worked up folks get about him, he seems to shrug that stuff off, at least outwardly, pretty easily.
Let's see, I can go all the way back to 2011 and find a World Series champion that used its CLOSER (TM) for more than an inning in the postseason, and that team (Cardinals) did it 4 times with Jason Motte. That team happened to be managed by the modern inventor of the easy, 1-inning save, Tony La Russa.
The fact that it took all of 5 seconds to find a winning team that doesn't restrict it's CLOSER (TM) to 1 inning and that it happened to be perhaps the least likely combination to do so (La Russa with a mediocre closer), my guess is that Torre isn't unique in doing this.
The spreaders would say that 3-29 is meaningless and that a manager should know that. Of course, maybe Torre knew that and thought this was the best way to snap ARod out of it.
Then the spin would just be how demoting ARod lit a fire under his ass, and motivated him to that performance. It's heads I win, tails you lose. IOW, complete ########.
Edit: Right on cue #13...
Do you think that was Torre's thought process? I'd guess Torre thought dropping him in the batting order might shake him out of his slump or relieve some pressure he was putting on himself or light a fire or something like that. Maybe wrong, maybe right, but understandable given his thought process.
It's the rest of us who put the spin on such a decision ("It was disrespectful," "No it was arson").
Judging from results is not good analysis, I know. A converse example is how Ron Washington handled Mike Napoli last year. Opinion waxed that Napoli should have been hitting higher in the Rangers' lineup. But then Napoli, batting 7th/8th, drove in ten runs in the World Series. You might say that if he'd been hitting 3rd or 4th, he would have driven in 14 runs and they'd have won the Series; but nobody's ever done such a thing (ie driven in 14 runs in a Series). I prefer to think that both managers "got lucky": AROD did nothing to counterindicate batting him 8th, and Napoli happened to come up with a boatload of men on base, and made the most of it. Both decisions "worked out," even if both can be criticized.
He channeled his anger by commissioning a painting of Torre as a Trojan warrior being trampled by a herd of centaurs.
I think managers are generally crappy players who worked really hard. The probably resent the "gifted" athletes.
Edit: Not that this is so with Torre, of course, but generally it seems that way.
McCarthy and Babe Ruth?
Though I don't know about McCarthy and any of the other greats he managed, for comparison.
Tony LaRussa was smart about it, he would pick the 2nd or 3rd best hitter on his team and loathe him. Canseco, Rolen, Rasmus, etc. That way the best guys are still happy but there's someone meaningful to throw under the bus when the team doesn't play well.
I don't think Stengal ever got over Joe's fragility..and Joe never got over the affront to his pride. Both stubborn, cold men, they never found common ground.
Mantle is easier. Stengal worshiped McGraw. He wanted to school Mantle the way McGraw had schooled Ott and so many others, but better the man. He saw the Mick as a potential Cobb/Ruth combo. That Mantle wouldn't make the sacrifice necessary to reach such heights drove Stengal crazy.
Almost all of his comments regarding Mantle sound like a Professor dejected at his students inability to maximize their potential.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a lineup change done in desperation** is just a lineup change done in desperation. But anyone who watched A-Rod flail helplessly at everything during that entire series should know that nothing was going to snap him out of it short of about five straight hanging sliders. It may not have been the swiftest move on Torre's part but given the circumstances, I don't see how anyone can read all these darker motives into it.
**The Yanks had blown a 3-1 lead in game 2 that would've put them up 2-0, and then got shut out 6-0 in game 3 against a pitcher (Kenny Rogers) whom they'd absolutely owned during his entire career. And who was their starter in game 4? Jaret ####### Wright. Yeah, I'd say they were desperate, and had a right to be.
and sometimes a cigar is scapegoating, Andy--and this is one example
I'm not defending Torre's comments now, but that doesn't mean that his lineup decision was based on anything else than a desperate hunch to stave off elimination. You can't always fall back on overall stats when a player is as helpless looking as A-Rod had been during that entire playoff.
but---you remember the ethos surrounding that team at the time. They were invincible in the postseason until (oops)2001, (oops)2002, etc (oops) thru 2005-they DID need a scapegoat. They ab-so-positively needed one. And since A-Rod had been the DS since 2004 (slap-gate), it was too easy for Torre to use it
Why would he need to move him to eighth to make him the scapegoat, unless you (and more important, Torre) think it made Arod less likely to hit from that spot*? Arod already wasn't hitting and was getting all the blame from the media and fans. Joe didn't need to slide Arod down in the lineup for him to take all of the criticism if the Yankees lost the series _ Arod was going to get it regardless. In fact, only by moving him down did Torre open himself to the kind of criticism we see in Post 21.
If Torre was scapegoating Arod, he was ####### miserable at it.
* And, of course, it was Torre's secret wish that Arod kept performing poorly.
Yeah, he'd never do that to Giambi. Well, other than the 2003 ALCS, when he dropped a struggling Giambi from the No. 3 hole he hit in during the first six games of the series down to the seventh slot, where he preceded to go 2-5 with a homer in the Yanks' 6-5 win. Of course, unlike the ALDS against Detroit, Torre was trying to win the ALCS against Boston, so that act was clearly not a case of up showing and goat scaping as it was with Arod.
This has really nothing to do with dropping A-Rod to 8th. A-Rod was the AL leader in slugging, home runs and OPS+ and was the MVP. He got dropped in the lineup despite the fact that several other teammates were performing just as badly.
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you suffered through all those years that the Yankees dominated the game. It just wasn't fair and someone has to pay.
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you're still so steamed about the way the Yanks played in that ALCS that you have to scapegoat the manager.
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you're still furious Torre didn't move Jeter to third base and show him who the boss is around here.
And some of you are scapegoating Torre because you think that his real target was sabermetrics.
All of the above is obviously complete bullshit, but no more so than the idea that a lineup move of a guy who was hitting like a combination of Rob Picciolo and a frightened deer was "scapegoating" him.
The world was already saying that. They didn't need an alert from Torre.
And of course you don't think the Giambi case is relevant - nobody talks of the Giambi case as an example of showing up a star hitter.
I don't know the specific reason why Torre dropped Arod. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be something along the lines of shaking things up, trying to relieve pressure (which seemingly worked three years earlier for his best hitter), etc., which are infinitely more plausible to me than the fact that in a 5-game series the Yankees were trailing 2-1, the manager was more interested in shaming his best hitter than winning the ballgame. And if his object was to make the world think lesser of Arod, then the opinions of numerous fans in this thread demonstrates that he failed spectacularly.
Of course, when Billy Martin did it to Reggie Jackson, Reggie got pissed and hit the snot out of the ball, and everybody went home happy.
Andy, I'm going to disagree here. It has been made clear in his comments since he did not and does not like A-Rod. I'm satisfied with a personal interpretation that breaking him out of his slump was (brilliantly) secondary and played as primary, and being a - mostly clueless, deer-in-headlights - jerk was primary and played as immaterial.
Of course, when Billy Martin did it to Reggie Jackson, Reggie got pissed and hit the snot out of the ball, and everybody went home happy.
A-Rod definitely had issues Reggie clearly did not.
Damon
Jeter
Abreu
Sheffield
Giambi
Matsui
Posada
He wasn't exactly hitting behind Rey Ordonez and Spike Owen.
However, Torre's comments in his book and his subsequent comments in interviews when, to my knowledge, ARod has never publicly said a single bad word about Torre, is bush league garbage. Think, even, about the SUBSTANCE of Torre's slams. "A-Rod was the hardest working player I ever coached, won two MVP awards, but just cared too much about doing well." Torre comes off like a total ####### knob.
Andy, I'm going to disagree here. It has been made clear in his comments since he did not and does not like A-Rod. I'm satisfied with a personal interpretation that breaking him out of his slump was (brilliantly) secondary and played as primary, and being a - mostly clueless, deer-in-headlights - jerk was primary and played as immaterial.
Of course the beauty of all this is that none of it is provable one way or the other without an future autopsy of Torre's cryogenically preserved brain, which makes it perfect for internet arguments. But it'd take a lot more than I've seen here to think that Torre was so crazy as to deliberately sabotage his team when it was on the brink of elimination, just to make some petty statement about a player he didn't like personally.
What issues?
How many MVPs hit 8th after hitting .3109 with 48 homers? It's pretty remarkable to act like having A-Rod hit 8th is no big deal, especially when everyone involved seemed to think it was a pretty big deal.
Agreed.
DB
We seem to think it was a big deal. I don't recall the people involved making any kind of deal about it.
As do I. My best guess is there was nothing sinister about moving him to 8th (I can't rule it out, but it seems far less plausible than Torre was simply hoping to have lightning strike twice). But his repeated comments since then about his issues with Arod have been really ugly, particularly considering Arod has been nothing but publicly respectful toward Torre.
How many MVPs hit 8th after hitting .3109 with 48 homers? It's pretty remarkable to act like having A-Rod hit 8th is no big deal, especially when everyone involved seemed to think it was a pretty big deal.
Ya got your years mixed up. 2006 was actually a fairly underwhelming year by A-Rod standards, sandwiched between his two MVPs...he was obviously a great player still, but he had some very rough stretches, especially in August. He was terrible in that playoff series, but in fairness to him the Tigers got some freaking aces pitching.
Dropping A-Rod is not something I would have done, but it also wasn't a crime against managing, especially when you had a gaggle of HOF and HOVG hitters to line up any which way you'd like. Torre's mouthing off is far worse.
Except that wasn't the reaction at all when he did almost the exact same thing to his best hitter three years earlier, a move that coincided with a monster game from said hitter and a memorable victory for the team.
And, I daresay, if Arod had a similar game in 2006 as Giambi did in 2003 (as corrected, 2 homers), the idea that such a drop in the lineup had been a despicable act would never have taken root.
The safe way to handle Game 4 for Torre would have been to simply slot Arod into the same spot in the batting order. If he fails again, it's on Arod (although by this point in time, he probably could have had a decent game but if the team failed, it would still be on Arod). But Torre instead did something, which always opens the manager up to more criticism than sticking with the status quo. And which is why, to me, the idea that the move was designed to shift the blame to Rodriguez doesn't make any sense.
*This is just a hypo.
but as someone upstream has pointed out:
why not?
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you suffered through all those years that the Yankees dominated the game. It just wasn't fair and someone has to pay.
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you're still so steamed about the way the Yanks played in that ALCS that you have to scapegoat the manager.
Some of you are scapegoating Torre because you're still furious Torre didn't move Jeter to third base and show him who the boss is around here.
And some of you are scapegoating Torre because you think that his real target was sabermetrics.
Can I scapegoat Torre for making a habit of dividing his bullpens into pets and pariahs, and then overusing his two pets (besides Rivera) all season long, even when totally unnecessary, so that they would be worn down and less effective by the postseason? Or if not that, for having a face that looked like W.C. Fields' ass?
There's only one eight-hole. You can't bat everybody who's slumping there. And as for Cano, he batted ninth in the first three games of the series, so it would have been pretty tough to move him down in the order.
Becasue Torre didn't believe ARod would play better than what he was already doing?
You can call it scapegoating, or trying to take pressure off hitters, or whatever, but moving good-but-slumping hitters down in the lineup during the postseason was something Torre was doing regularly by 2006.
That's not scapegoating, that's standard second-guessing, and I agree with a lot of it, unless you're trying to say that his choice of pets didn't have anything to do with their performance. Plenty of managers get justifiably criticized for overworking their best relievers, and there are competing philosophies about when to bring in your closer.
But all of that's got nothing to do with assuming that Torre was "scapegoating" A-Rod because of some petty personal whim. That may fit into some larger anti-Torre narrative and it may make you feel like Sigmund Freud, but AFAIC it's still a lot of hot air.
Or if not that, for having a face that looked like W.C. Fields' ass?
I thought it just looked like Barry Bonds's size 11 cap.
To quote Freud again, "In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience"... but in the short term those 6-2 leads against the Orioles looked oh so shaky.
1) Jeff Weaver, Game 5 2003 WS (with Rivera in the bullpen)
2) Not using Mussina in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS (after a rain out)
3) Not stealing off wakefield/varitek in extra innings in Game 5 (look it up; that STILL infuriates me)
4) Not asking the ump to stop the game when the bugs attacked Joba
5) Bringing in Jome Run Javy with the bases loaded in Game 7 2004 (Loiza was a better choice)
6) Every day Scott Proctor and his bizarre use of numerous relievers (Chris Hammond in particualr comes to mind)
I don't know why people keep comparing other situations that are totally different to A-Rod. There are three other guys in the lineup hitting 1-for-something and they're all demonstrably worse hitters than A-Rod. If the idea is to shake up the lineup and move the slumping hitters down, it doesn't make any sense to take A-Rod and move him to 8th while you have 1-for-something Gary Sheffield batting cleanup.
Because the idea of shaking something up isn't just to move the slumping hitters down, but to shake up the lineup and, hopefully, get all the guys producing. Or, because he thought Arod in particular was pressing, and the move down might help him (in the same way it did Giambi*) and getting your best hitter straightened out is of the utmost importance.
Now these are just possibilities, of which there are too numerous to consider. I don't know why he did it, though I suspect the explanations that involve Joe Torre trying to win Game 4 are more likely than the ones where Joe Torre's prime motivation is to embarrass Arod, but YMMV.
And for the record, he dropped Giambi all the way out of the lineup for Game 4, which, the last I checked, is lower than 8th. Cano batted seventh.
* Obviously the move down may have had nothing to do with Giambi's big Game 7, but you could see why Torre might think otherwise.
I'm not sure in that moment Gary Sheffield or Jason Giambi were demonstrably worse hitters than A-Rod. In 2006, the year in question, Giambi had more homers, RBIs, a higher OPS, and a 148 OPS+ to ARod's (134). The year before that, Giambi posted a 161 OPS+. Gary Sheffield is one of the greatest hitters of his era. Gary freaking Sheffield. A-Rod was really REALLY in a colossal funk at the time in question.
As I said already, I think you have 2006 A-Rod confused with 2005 and 2007 A-Rod. And this all becomes a lot more reasonable when you remember that the 2006 Yankees postseason lineup was, literally, a Hall of Fame or Hall of Very Good player in every. single. slot.
The efficacy of Torre's decision is an entirely different matter than what has been discussed here.
If you claim moving Arod down to the 8 hole in hopes of reviving a slumping offense is a fool's errand, go right ahead. I wouldn't put up a fight.
I've merely countered the idea, prsented several times above, that it was obviously done to humiliate/scapegoat Arod. While I can't possibly rule out that was the motivationn (not being in Joe Torre's mishapen noggin), it doesn't seem to me to be the likely explanation.
Torre even admits doubt about his own decision in his book. But he got out of that one too. Neither team scored, the Yankees won 1-0, and they took the Series in six games.
Obviously, Joe Torre made bunches more decisions that worked than those that didn't, though. Most managers don't get close enough to world championships to have a string of questionable postseason decisions.
Ray DiPerna? Paging Ray DiPerna to the thread to discuss Ron Washington's postseason managing. Ray DiPerna to the thread, please.
If Ron Washington hadn't been so determined to humiliate Lance Berkman by walking Albert Pujols just to get to him, the Rangers would be champs today.
Seeing as how Ray has not posted in this thread, you really shouldn't talk about him behind his back. It is exceedingly rude.
Torre has more practical knowledge about baseball than anyone who posted here.
My point exactly, needless to say. It is impossible, for instance, to discuss the bad postseason managing decisions of Ned Yost :)
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