Big joke: Girardi third in manager voting

Girardi could have managed this team just like John Russell does....Asleep.

Swisher was acquired via trade.

The Pirates would not have been a contender by having the Yankees' offseason.  They would have needed to sign eight of the top available free agents.

mvn.com/.../an-alternate-2009-part-two.html

I don't think Girardi is an exceptional game manager and I wouldn't say he was the manager of the year.  But he's not a bad manager and certainly not a big joke.  Joe Torre had a blank check the previous 7 years and wasn't able to win it all.  Girardi was able to do so this year.

Give Girardi some credit for being able to get the talent to play to their potential.  Having the most talented/expensive team doesn't always translate into having a successful team, let alone a championship team.  Look at Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.  All those blue chip recruits, all those resources the past 5 years and yet a couple of close losses to USC have been his high points.

Or consider Wade Phillips whose 2008 Cowboys were considered more talented than his 13-3 2007 team.  But he  couldn't manage the team divas or prevent egos from blowing up the 2008 season.

Girardi was in a no-win situation.  He's replacing a legend and was expected to win a World Series, nothing less.  He's done that in his 2nd year.  Not too bad and not a joke.

Heads up Bob.... It's Nick Swisher, not Steve.

(Thanks.  Steve was his dad. -- Bob Smizik)

Bob,

Your last line says it all - He no more deserved a vote for Manager of the Year than did the Pirates John Russell.

I'll go a step farther - the least qualified manager to receive a vote for Manager of the Year in 2009 was Joe Girardi, given what the Yankees spent on talent.  The Yankees should be in the World Series every year to justify what they spend.  And Girardi, an otherwise able manager, had only to push buttons all year to get to the Series.

Too many of the baseball writers have myopia - they consider New York City the center of the baseball universe.

I agree with PaulH's last sentence about New York being the media's center of the baseball universe. And of course, Girardi coming in third in the voting points to a dereliction of duty on the part of those privileged enough to have a vote in the matter. Maybe Girardi actually is a good manager. But he certainly wasn't called upon to do any serious "managing" with the roster gift-wrapped and handed to him this year. While it's not his own fault, he didn't *earn* anything this year. Or, as Bob said, he no more deserves votes for Manager of the Year than John Russell does. How difficult can it be to put on a uniform each night,  fill out THAT lineup card, then gesture for Mariano Rivera in the ninth? Heck, unlike some of the egos Joe Torre had to massage, Girardi even had a club house of pretty low key guys to work with.

(New York is the media center of everything, not just baseball. But I think you'd have a hard time showing that New York teams and players get a high amount of media awards.  If Girardi got four first-place votes, at least two of them came from outside New York.

Sabathia finished fourth in the Cy Young voting, although he had as many wins as any pitcher in the American League. -- Bob Smizik)

Bob,

What I think PaulH was saying -and what I certainly was meaning to say, myself- is that the Yankees draw disproportionate attention from the media, wherever the individual sports reporters may be located. The Yankees are simply a sexier subject. One example: when the MLB Channel first went on air, it was highly lopsided in it's share of coverage given to the Yankees (and Red Sox, too). I have no idea whence the voters who cast any votes for Girardi. But they are too biased towards all things Yankees, and Joe Girardi garnering more points for the Mgr. of the Yr. than any other AL manager but two, is a glaring illustration of this. I would have thought you agreed, or rather, that I had been agreeing with you.

(I think the TV networks might be biased toward NYC but I don't think print journalists are.  --  Bob Smizik)

As for the Cy Young voting, just because the writers got it right on that one, doesn't earn them a pass for the silly voting on Girardi. Greinke was the Cy Young winner because he deserved to be. Hernandez was the most fitting No. 2, as well. As for numbers three through five (Verlander, Sabathia, Halladay) they were all interchangeable, in my own humble opinion.

(Who gave them a pass? --- Bob Smizik)

Joe Girardi and John Russell were hired at the same time.  John Russell wasn't considered as a managerial candidate for the Staten Island Yankees let alone the New York Yankees.

Joe Girardi won in his second season as manager of the Yankees after the club went eight seasons without winning the World Series.  That is worthy of Manager of the Year votes.  How many World Series had CC Sabathia, Mark Teixiera and AJ Burnett won before 2009?  Girardi put it all together and got the team to win.

Mike Scioscia's team underachieve on the big stage.  He reminds me of Bobby Cox.  Overrated!

(Manager of Year voting is done before the post-season (the big stage) begins. 

As for Russell, when he was hired by the Pirates in 2003 as third base coach, I thought he was being brought in to eventually replace  McClendon. His minor-league managerial record was that good.  -- Bob Smizik

I agree wholeheartedly, Bob, that it is no great accomplishment  to manage that team.  To compare him to Russell, though, might be a bit much.  He kept the team together when they were playing sub-.500 baseball without A-Rod.  His handling of Joba was deft, especially the decision not to use him in the playoffs.  Same with his decision to go with a 3 man rotation when conventional wisdom was to do differently.  It helps to have the horses, undeniably, but he still had tough decisions to make.  

I don't think NY players win a disproportionate share of MVP's, Cy Youngs or other awards.  And if it was a "media bias" issue, the same would be true in football and basketball, and it clearly isn't.  I just think that some people vote for the winner for manager of the year, and the Yankees are the winners most often.

"Girardi put it all together and got the team to win."

How?

Good point about voting taking place before the post-season.  I retract most of my comment above.

"Girardi put it all together and got the team to win."

"How?"

Exactly!

That's why he got four first place votes.

Bob, your headliner says it all.  A total joke, with NO implication he should have been #1 or #2.  Buying the baseball game ought to be outlawed. And until it is, possibly never, baseball is just a notch below the WWF and professional boxing in credibility and entertainment value.

It's professional prostitution with no greater talent required than being able to feel your ankles when the owner gropes his own pockets.  

For the life of me, I cannot, beyond your warm-fuzzies for the fairness of days-gone-bye on the diamond, figure out why you devote so much blog inches to this lost cause.  

Oh, and did we mention the drug scene?

Bob,

Spot on regarding Girardi & while Scioscia is a great skipper, he was awful this post-season, which was also pointed out on numerous occassions by the media.

Santo-

getting MLB players to play to their potential is overrated & is not comparable in any way to a football coach, at either the NCAA or NFL level, doing the same.

JL-

as for the MLB Network's bias towards the Yanks & BoSox, no different than the NFL Network's doing the same with all things Brady/Belicheat & Manning.

Bob,

"I think the TV networks might be biased toward NYC but I don't think print journalists are." Well, the body of work of print journalists out there is far more difficult for me to get a handle on and to label. But I still put forth that there is too much attention paid to the Yankees, in print journalism as well. I would never claim that your print journalism brethren display the same ridiculous Yankee-bias that the TV networks do, though. Nevertheless, as you yourself argue, the Mgr. of the Year voting that put Girardi in third place for the award, was simply wrong. And responsibility for that lies squarely with the Baseball Writers Association of America. I can only believe this "Big Joke", as the heading for this thread reads, was due to undue Yankees-on-the-brain syndrome.

(Cite another instance of print journalism favoritism toward New York. I think any team that won as much as the Yankees would be getting the attention they do.  --- Bob Smizik)

"Cite another instance of print journalism favoritism toward (the Yankees)?"

I'll remember to do the that the very next time I see one, and that shouldn't take long. But why wouldn't the AL Manager of the Year voting which placed Joe Girardi in third place not be good enough? What else can possibly explain it? Certainly not merit.

Meanwhile, let the following be my temporary response to your challenge: if one Googles "2008 MLB Playoffs, Yankees," one will get 3,320,000 hits. Google "2008 MLB Playoffs, Phillies" (the Phillies actually being a team that was IN the '08 playoffs -all the way till the end), and one only gets 2, 310, 000 hits. Ditto searches done for the '08 Red Sox, at 2, 290, 000, and on down the line. What ON EARTH were writers blabbing so much about the Yankees for, concerning the 2008 playoffs?

(One instance -- Girardi finishing third -- is not a trend. I will point out, as a letter writer did, that a first-place manager finishing third in Manager of the Year voting a three-divison league is not all that unusual.

The number of Google hits is indicitive of nothing. Maybe all those hits were negative. There also is a tremendous concentration of media within New York. Obviously, it will be writing about the Yankees. It has been my experience that the media outside of New York dislike the New York teams as much as everyone else.-- Bob Smizik

"Maybe all those hits were negative." Well, there would have to be far, far more of those "negative" hits for the Yankees, compared with say, the Phillies, to compensate for the nearly 50% increase in overall hits the Yankees receive, when Googling "2008 MLB Playoffs, (insert team's name)."  Afterall, the Phillies played all the way through the '08 post-season, and had been reigning world champions for the past year. The Yankees didn't even make the playoffs in '08. Of course, the Yanks WERE in it this year, but so were the Phillies. All the way to the end.

But if you don't like that example, fine.  I didn't post, yesterday, with any examples memorized, but I'll keep my eyes open for some.

As for "a first-place manager finishing third in Manager of the Year voting a three-divison league is not all that unusual," why then did you pen the piece at the top of this thread?

(I wrote the post in question because I thought the voters were wrong. I did not write it because I thought the voters had a pro-New York bias. I am not suffering from Pittsburgh Paranoia.
Did you notice that C.C. Sabathia, who tied for the American League lead in wins, finished fourth in Cy Young voting? 

Here are some more example of how the print media, which votes on the MLB awards, does not favor New York teams.   Last Met to win the MVP award:  NEVER.  Last Met to win the Cy Young: Doc Gooden 1985, when he was 24-4  with a 1.53 ERA.  Last Yankee to win the Cy Young: Clemens in 2001, when he was 20-3. Before him: Ron Guidry in 1978, when he was 25-3. 

The only place where New York players got a lot of votes was MVP, where the Y ankees high finishes always make their players leading candidates. --  Bob Smizik)

Whoa, there. I agree about the Mets. But all along I've only been contending that the *Yankees* are the ones who get all the attention. Likewise, I have never contended that the Yankees win undue awards due to their popularity with the media. I confess I do, in fact, wonder if they get more votes than they should, because of this. But I've never made that claim because I haven't looked it up. What my claim has been, is that  the Yankees "draw disproportionate attention from the media," "New York being the media's center of the baseball universe," and yes, "there is too much attention paid to the Yankees, in print journalism as well." Although, in the very next sentence after that last line, I stated that I do not believe print journalists to be nearly as baised as tv journalists are, towards the Yankees.

Now while I still think the Google hits do amount to something, I'll just have to keep my eyes open for better examples. It's tricky to prove, because any single example, viewed in isolation (the such as the Girardi case), can be dismissed. This is a remotely akin to Justice Potter Stewart's problem with defining hard pornography. He refused to do so, famously stating:  "I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."

But Yankee bias is how I see it with the 3rd place finish for Girardi. If you say you do not see it that way, that you only go so far as to say "the voters were wrong," then I will not put words in your mouth. But myself, I believe the *reason* that they were wrong, is because of Yankee bias. Anyway, I'll have to get back to you when I come across other glaring examples of such bias.