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.

Who’s My Shortstop?

When Didi Gregorius went down while playing in the World Baseball Tournament, Girardi had a host of players to choose from the pool Cashman had given him. That, in itself, created a problem, especially with one of those players being the elephant in the room in Gleyber Torres, who easily won the fans vote putting pressure on both Cashman and Girardi.

Girardi knew his GM’s plan for Torres, and he pretty much let Cashman handle the Torres thing with the media while he concentrated on the other players at hand.

That pool included Tyler Wade, Miguel Andujar, Rob Refsnyder, and a lightweight named Ronald Torreyes. The early bets came in for Refsnyder based on Girardi’s penchant for experience,  especially for a middle infield position.

Then, when Wade and Andujar began to make their presence known as they received their playing time, the bets were evenly split between the two.

In the end, though, Girardi surprised everyone when he tagged a five-foot-five, 150 lb Ronald Torreyes over them all. Since then, of course, there has been no looking back despite the fact that both Andujar and Wade are tearing it up in the minors.

Torreyes has proven to be steady not only in the field but with his bat as well. In fact, it wasn’t until last night that someone moved ahead of him in RBI’s for the team.

What happens when Gregorius returns is another matter, however, and Girardi will be faced with the task of making another decision. He’ll figure it out, though, and it’s a safe bet that Torreyes will remain as an integral part of the team moving forward.

Who’s My Right Fielder?

Aaron Judge did not receive the nod from Joe Girardi that he would be the Yankees starting right fielder until the final weekend of Spring Training. This was not an accident, and it would appear that Girardi felt it necessary that Judge wins the job instead of handing it to him.

As part of that design, Aaron Hicks was put out there as the main competition for Judge. Hicks proved to be no pushover and coupled with the fact that Girardi, and for that matter the organization as a whole, has a particular liking for Hicks put the pressure squarely on the shoulders of Judge to perform.

The Yankees, both publicly and privately, told Judge that if he wants to have a career with the Yankees, he needs to cut down on his number of strikeouts and be more selective on the pitches he swings at.

For his part, Girardi let the competition play itself out and was cautious in showing his hand throughout the preseason. And, it worked.

Judge modestly cut down on his strikeouts and put a dent in the scoreboard at Steinbrenner Field that is still there today with a monstrous blast that had everyone shaking their heads in wonderment.

During its telecast Sunday Night, ESPN labeled Judge as the tallest/heaviest position player to have ever played the game. They can’t be far off if it isn’t true, but Judge is now living up to the standards expected and hoped of him, drawing fans everywhere to watch him in batting practice.

Tales and comparisons to the likes of Giancarlo Stanton come from everywhere, but so far Judge is managing to keep it all in perspective.

And the credit for that has to go to Girardi, who took a piece a raw material and continues to mold and refine it into a player who is poised to be the Yankees right fielder for many years to come. In another time, Girardi may have gone with his instincts to the veteran player in Hicks.

But not this time. And the Yankees are better for it.

Where’s My Fifth Starter Coming From?

You might imagine that a conversation between Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi, perhaps with tongue-in-cheek, took place in which Girardi asks Cashman, “So, this is it? This is my starting staff?”  And without missing a beat, Cashman replies, “You got it, Joe. Deal with it.”

As so, with help coming from nowhere, Girardi looked around the Yankees camp and voiced to himself, Okay, this it. Now, deal with it. And he did.

And pretty much like the rest of us, he probably took Masahiro Tanaka for granted, especially while witnessing the spring his ace was having and he gave him no further thought except to name Tanaka as the Opening Day starter.

But then, things began to get a little murky. Girardi knew that the second half of the season that CC Sabathia had foretold of a real possibility that Sabathia had crossed the divide from being a power pitcher to a thinking man’s pitcher, but he couldn’t be sure and there were also the concerns that his aging star would fall prey to another knee injury.

And as Girardi moved further down the rotation, he had penciled in Michael Pineda and Luis Cessa. But both gave him the chills and microscopic confidence, especially with Pineda and his lights-out stuff but no results. Luis Severino was a possibility, but there again he wavered a bit picturing Severino as just a younger version of Pineda.

And beyond that, he breathed easier knowing that he wouldn’t need a fifth starter until the third week of the season, but who would that person be? Girardi could look at his roster and know that the natural choice would be to pencil in either Adam Warren or Bryan Mitchell, but what would that do for his plans in the bullpen?

Things loosened up a bit when Cessa pitched his way out of the discussion and was demoted to the minors, but it wasn’t until Girardi caught a glimpse of this tall left-hander that he began to form an idea that would change everything.

Girardi liked what he saw in the southpaw’s over the top downhill presence and command on the mound, but his first comments about Jordan Montgomery were guarded, saying only that he was “curious” about him and wanted to see more.

Montgomery gave both Girardi and the Yankees more every time he took the mound, sealing his fate when, along with Chad Green, he took apart a Detroit Tigers Class-A team, all the while making it look easy.

From there, Girardi didn’t hesitate. He not only named Montgomery as his fifth starter but he brought him up a week early to make a start at Yankee Stadium before the streak became a streak.

Put all together, Girardi has been masterful in putting the rotation together, and that says nothing about his usual abilities in using his bullpen with master strokes as well.

But it’s Girardi’s hunch on Montgomery that could have the most telling effect on the Yankees season over the long haul.