Yankees: Six reasons to bring Joe Girardi back in 2018

Melding the young and not so young

Until this season, the Yankees have fielded a team of mostly veterans. And because of that, Joe Girardi has had to make little or no effort attending to the mundane chores of managing like making sure the guys who need batting practice, take it. Or, the guy that has an appointment in the trainer’s room at 11:00 gets to the Stadium on time, etc.

And before the season began, there were questions floating around as to whether or not Girardi was the right person to handle the influx of young talent who would be playing at the major league level. Would there be, in other words, a “Generation Gap”?

We can only tell from the outside looking in the fishbowl, but it appears that Girardi has met the challenge. As we discussed before, it’s not a matter of the age difference with Girardi as it is the image he off-handedly projects at times for being aloof and stoic.

But just to make sure, Girardi did something very smart when he publicly named a few players as missionaries to preach the Yankee way. And not only that, but he wanted these veterans to aggressively mentor youngsters like Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Clint Frazier, and at the time, Greg Bird and Michael Pineda.

Sure enough, the veterans responded, and a few like Matt Holliday, CC Sabathia, and Brett Gardner took on the job with enthusiasm and glee. And the results are evident on the playing field as well as beyond the playing field with none of those growing pains incidents we see so often from young players trying to grow their head into their bodies.

If anything, the Yankees might think about “youngizing” their coaching staff. These are the guys who work more with the players on a day-to-day basis and the communication between the two elements might be improved in that way, but it is not necessary.