Mike Mussina’s vote doesn’t count, but he’d like to think Joe Torre will still be managing the Yankees in 2008.
If any Yankee should hold animosity toward the manager, it’s Mussina, and yet the veteran right-hander went out of his way to defend Torre yesterday after George Steinbrenner’s decree that Torre would probably be fired if the Yanks lose the ALDS to the Indians.
“[Torre] has done a tremendous job, and this is the guy who has taken me out of the rotation, and I still think very highly of him,” Mussina said before Game 3 of the ALDS last night. “It worked out, by the way – [Torre] is a pretty smart guy.”
Bumped from the rotation for two weeks in September, Mussina returned to pitch strong down the stretch for the Yankees and was a candidate to start a potential Game 4 of the ALDS tonight, although Chien-Ming Wang was the front-runner.
“I would play for the guy any time,” Mussina said. “Just the way he handles the day-to-day stuff with the Yankees – the ups, the downs, the positive stuff, the negative stuff. After wins and losses, nobody gets too high or too low.
“He deals with all the expectations tremendously well. He lets his players do everything in their power to win ballgames and puts us in position be successful. Besides that, it’s up to us.”
Mussina said he learned of Steinbrenner’s comments while listening to the radio yesterday. But Mussina couldn’t say he was surprised by the tenor of Steinbrenner’s remarks – talk has been swirling for awhile about the manager’s situation.
“They talked about it last year, they talked about it in May, they’ve talked about it all the time,” Mussina said. “It’s become part of it. We have to play better, it’s just that simple. Whatever the aftermath is, we’ll worry about it then.
“The other stuff will take care of itself somehow. And if it doesn’t work out for us . . . we understand there could be some changes.”
mpuma@nypost.com