Joe Girardi Goes Off On Faltering Yankees
By Matt Mirro
In a season where the Yankees roster looked anything but formi0dable the entire organization fell under scrutiny, General Manager Brian Cashman’s front office moves were criticized for much of the season while under performing players felt the heat from fans and media. Then there’s manager Joe Girardi who has been both praised and criticized for his work with the team in 2014.
Often appearing to take a laid back and overly relax approach to the club Girardi was not very well liked in a lot of circles around the Yankee universe. Now, recent reports are saying that a few days ago the Bombers’ skipper decided to rip each and every one of the Yankees players on the poor performance that led to the team missing the playoffs for the second straight year. Well Joe, it’s a little too late for that.
According to reports Girardi tore apart one group of players for being “overweight” and another group for not being “hungry enough” (Hungry to succeed not… you get the point).
Guys like Carlos Beltran who was plagued by a pesky bone spur all season and batted just .233 with 15 home runs and 49 RBI in 109 games or Mark Teixeira who was also forced to deal with a lot of aches and pains, batting only .217 with 22 home runs and 61 RBI may have been the focal point of the manager’s ravings. Or maybe some focus was put on Brian McCann who, despite actually ending up having a decent season, struggled for most of the early part of the year as he adjusted to the American League.
Pitchers like Shawn Kelley, C.C. Sabathia, David Huff and others might have felt the wrath of Girardi’s rant. Girardi expressed displeasure with news of the meeting getting out to the press and attempted to assure the media that it was no different than any other meeting a club has over the course of the season .
However, it did sound like the normally even keeled Girardi let off a lot of steam. But what good did this do?
The season is already over with the Yankees missing out on the playoffs. Many players like Stephen Drew, Chase Headley, Brandon McCarthy, Ichiro Suzuki, Huff and others may not even be in pinstripes in 2015 and the points made by Girardi would have served no benefit to the team,
Where was the skipper’s fire when the team still had a shot at making the playoffs? Where was the anger or the passion when it could still do some good? Fans had to sit through a miserable season while Girardi sat on the bench like a quiet school boy outside the principal’s office. Where was this sort of meeting when it did the team any good? Girardi’s intentions were great and all but it’s a little too late to try and light a fire under this team.