HOUSTON — During the 2010-11 offseason, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman boasted to industry folks about the extension he had just given to manager Joe Girardi.
Coming off a 2010 campaign in which he seemed to revert to his tense ways of two years prior, and with the Cubs having retained interim manager Mike Quade, Girardi had to settle for a modest raise from $2.5 million annually to $3 million.
The Yankees are missing the playoffs this year, for the first time since that 2008 season, when Girardi took over for Joe Torre. Nevertheless, this time around, Girardi figures to have the upper hand.
It isn’t the perfect storm — that would involve a 2013 Yankees championship — yet many existing factors work to Girardi’s advantage:
1. He’s coming off a season in which he has received a great deal of credit, deservedly so in The Post’s opinion, for keeping the Yankees afloat when they fielded their worst roster in a generation.
2. With the Yankees losing Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera to retirement, Robinson Cano facing free agency and Alex Rodriguez’s situation in flux, thanks to the 211-game suspension he’s grieving against Major League Baseball, the club has no interest in creating another question about its future.
3. The Cubs, Girardi’s hometown favorites and a team for which he played twice, might have an opening in the manager’s office. They’re expected to announce the status of incumbent Dale Sveum, a teammate of Girardi on the 1998 Yankees, as soon as Monday.
Add these up, and you get a giant “Cha-ching!” in Girardi’s favor.
“It’ll probably happen fairly quickly,” Girardi said Saturday, before the Yankees and Astros faced off at Minute Maid Park, of his upcoming talks with Yankees ownership and management. As for a resolution, he said, “I don’t like things to drag out, I can tell you that.”
If anyone drags this out, though, it will be Girardi. An active union participant in his playing days, Girardi knows how to use free agency to his advantage, which is, of course, his right. Six years ago, Girardi accepted the Yankees’ offer to succeed Torre only after playing the Yankees and Dodgers (who wound up hiring Torre) against each other to jack up his price.
We always wonder about Girardi and the Cubs, because he grew up in Peoria, Ill., and met his wife Kim at Northwestern University in Evanston. Longtime Cubs general manager Jim Hendry turned down Girardi twice, first in October 2006 when he selected Lou Piniella, then in October 2010, when he kept Quade while the Yankees still were alive in the playoffs. Ironically, Hendry now is a special assignment scout for the Yankees.
Hendry’s successors at Wrigley Field, Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer, have stripped the team near-bare and stocked young talent for two years, and they don’t think they’re far away from contending. It is believed Epstein and Hoyer admire Girardi for his managerial body of work and gladly would jettison Sveum, who has one more year on his contract, for Girardi. Sveum could be gone regardless of Girardi’s decision.
These are gloomy times for the Yankees, and it could get even gloomier with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner insistent they will get under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold next season. Nevertheless, they’re still baseball’s premier franchise, and they would be poised to start spending aggressively again after 2014.
Girardi, meanwhile, appears to generally like working for Steinbrenner, team president Randy Levine and general manager Cashman, and all indications are that Girardi’s family enjoys living year-round in Westchester County. Furthermore, Girardi is talking about the Yankees’ future, both publicly and privately, as though he will be a part of it.
Would he actually leave, with the Yankees expected to offer him a healthy raise? The very fact we’re asking the question, the notion that the Yankees would have a significant void with his departure, these benefit Girardi.
The Cano free agency and A-Rod appeal are going to take time to play out and will have domino effects on the payroll mandate. The Girardi decision will occur in a relative vacuum, as managers’ salaries don’t factor into the luxury tax, and should be resolved far sooner than the other looming headaches.
The Yankees very much hope they bring Girardi back into the fold quickly. If Cashman boasts this time, though, it will be just about retaining the skipper. The bragging rights over dollars and cents will belong to Girardi.