Yankees: Four Ways Joe Girardi Has Hit All The High Notes

The Yankees have a manager who is hitting all the high notes in this young season. Irrespective of the team’s current win streak, from day one in Spring Training he’s taken hold and is doing everything a manager is expected to do by putting his players in situations where they can succeed.

The Yankees entered the 2017 season with both a general manager and manager on the bubble with contracts that expire at the end of the season. Brian Cashman, the team’s General Manager, has done his job in putting together a pool of talent but’s it’s Joe Girardi‘s job to select from that pool the players that he believes provide the Yankees with their best chance to win.

He’s batting 1.000 in every respect that could be used as a measurement tool to judge his merit as a manager in 2017. Having said that, like many perhaps, I had some reservations during the offseason as to whether or not Girardi was the right man for “this” job, meaning would he be able to balance a team that was in a transition year.

Would he be able to extend, for instance, the rapport he so easily has with his veterans with the young talent that is present on the team and what would he do with the flimsy starting staff that Cashman left him with? And what would he do about replacing his injured starting shortstop?

It’s likely that Girardi has more talent as a “baseball man” than he’s often given for, and throughout all of Spring Training he applied that knowledge. And perhaps even more importantly, he applied his baseball instinct to come up with a team that making some noise in a Division that everyone expects will be a dogfight until the final days of the season.

Girardi has answered every one of those questions plus several more without missing a beat. Let’s take an in-depth look at some of the decisions he’s made so far. We’ll begin with this question.