Girardi dismisses bunting idea

Remember all that talk about the Yankees bunting more often? Scratch that.

“That’s not really our approach,” Joe Girardi said. “We’re not the Bronx Bunters, and we really never have been. The one thing you can concentrate on is really good at-bats and making sure you grind out your at-bats. If you have to move a runner over, make sure you hit the ball to the other side or pull it or try to drive the ball. Take the extra base when you can. We’re not going to change our philosophy.”

Girardi basically dismissed everything Kevin Long said last night. Girardi said he has no plans of changing his team’s offensive approach. The isn’t designed for small ball. Most of the hitters have very rarely been asked to bunt in their careers. And they aren’t going to get their swings back by trying to do something different.

“If you have a club that has a lot of speed and you have a lot of hit-and-run candidates, you might do that,” Girardi said. “That’s not something that we’re really built on. I’m not going to ask our guys to change who they are. You can’t do that. I can’t make our guys world-class sprinters all of a sudden. That’s not going to happen. We need to hit and we know that.”

Last night, Long mentioned a situation with runners at first and second with no outs in the second inning, suggesting the Yankees might have Nick Swisher bunt in that spot. Girardi disagreed.

“I think about moving them by Swish getting a hit or by putting a good at-bat or walking again like he did the time before,” Girardi said. “That’s how, to me, because Swish is not a guy that bunts. … There are times that I do play for one run. You’ve seen us bunt before, but I’m not going to put Robbie Cano up there with a runner on second and nobody out and say, ‘Robbie, put down a bunt.’ It just doesn’t make sense. You think about the hitters we have in our lineup, I’ve got a bunch of (guys who) during their careers have been 3s and 4s. They have not bunted.”

Thanks to Los.