Yankees Skipper Joe Girardi Hopeful Despite Mediocre Season

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi faces serious questions about his job security after failing to lead his club for the postseason for the third time in four years.

The New York Yankees finished in fourth place in the American League East for the first time since 1992 after playing the final game of the 2016 season Sunday, a fittingly disappointing 5-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles.

They did manage to extend their streak of winning seasons to 24 straight, although it was definitely a close call. They end the year at 84-78, but with a miserable -22 run differential. The fact that they impressively outperformed their 78-83 Pythagorean record is either a reflection of their dominant first half bullpen, or the hard-to-measure influence of manager Joe Girardi.

The team has regularly outperformed their Pythag under Girardi, leading many to wonder how influential he is at keeping his sometimes rag-tag roster afloat.

There is no getting around the fact that the Yankees completely collapsed in the first half of the season under his watch after entering 2016 as legitimate contenders. On the other hand, Girardi did not make the decision to build the lineup around 40-year-old Alex Rodriguez and injury-prone Mark Teixeira.

The influence of the manager is fairly limited. He’s just filling out the lineups and managing the bullpen. A recent study by Rob Arthur and Rian Watt of FiveThirtyEight rated Girardi as the second most effective skipper at managing his bullpen since the 2000 season (behind Joe Torre, so we’ve been spoiled apparently). He’s also consistently among the best in the game at getting his hitters the platoon advantage.

Girardi also deftly handled a number of delicate situations- removing Brian McCann from his starting job, Mark Teixeira’s struggles, and the midseason fire sale all could have become controversial without his steady hand. The Alex Rodriguez situation stands out as a rare misstep, but even that ultimately went pretty smoothly.

Even after overseeing the exciting turnaround in the second half, Girardi surely can’t be 100% sure of his job security given the team’s current transition. When asked about his future following the season’s final game, he responded, “Never worry about it. Don’t worry about it.”

While he admitted the season will be viewed by many as a failure because they didn’t qualify to the postseason, the skipper seemed pretty upbeat about the state of the club and what they accomplished this season, telling Randy Miller of NJ Advance Media:

"I’ll probably look at it as the disappointment of not making the playoffs and winning the World Series, but I’ve said all along I think there are some good things that happened this year. We just didn’t reach our goals. But there are some good things that took place where you saw some players come up and do some good things and get some valuable experience, and that should help us moving forward."

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As flawed as the 2016 Yankees were, I would be very surprised if they decided to make a managerial change this winter. Girardi seems to have an excellent relationship with both ownership and general manager Brian Cashman. As easy as it is to blame the manager, there is very little indication he is the problem.