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The final images of Joe Girardi came in the final innings of Game 4 in Detroit on Thursday afternoon, his arms folded and his lips pressed tightly together, a card player finally out of cards, a baseball manager finally out of moves.
He went against so many of the grains that define him as a manager. The moment Raul Ibanez walked out of the first-base dugout in the ninth inning of AL Division Series Game 3, you could almost sense Girardi’s unease at wandering so far away from his comfort zone.
And even when that decision worked out as well as any possibly can, when Ibanez homered to tie that game with the Orioles and later added another to win it, when the chastened Alex Rodriguez — for whom Ibanez had pinch hit — agreed it was a brave move, and the correct one, even then Girardi didn’t crow about his wisdom and his savvy.
“Sometimes,” he said, “you have to make very hard choices when you have this job.”
He knew, better than anyone, maybe earlier than anyone, that there would be other choices, other decisions, and those wouldn’t work out quite as well, wouldn’t be met with such universal acclaim.
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Maybe his gut told him Rodriguez wouldn’t rediscover any kind of form, any kind of power, any kind of luck against right-handed pitching — but his eyes surely told him Eric Chavez wasn’t making anyone forget Graig Nettles, and that for all his heroics the expiration date on Ibanez was approaching, too.
Girardi made logical — or at least explainable — decisions involving all three as the season dwindled down to a precious few days, then a precious few innings … and none of them worked. Ibanez joined the parade of hitters who looked as if they were swinging at black-eyed peas. Chavez wound up 0-for-16 in the postseason and added some shaky defense to the mix, too.
And Rodriguez? In some ways, Girardi managed to help turn him into an almost sympathetic figure. Yes, some hard-line fans liked the hard-line approach, especially after it was revealed that A-Rod so blatantly flouted common sense by flirting with the Aussie bikini model during Game 1. But there were also a lot of people — rightly — who wondered how you could think playing Chavez in place of Alex Rodriguez — Alex Rodriguez! — could possibly be anything other than a vengeful stab at humiliation.
The truth is, it was simply a poor decision, on the heels of an historically great one.
It’s just a different kind of decision than the ones Girardi is usually judged on. Normally the issue is his slavish reliance on stats and match-ups, the way he uses his bullpen, the order in which he lists the daily elements of his batting order, his almost universal reluctance to choose belly over binder.
Those are the collectible details of 162 games. By now he has to be used to that.
This was different. This was one bold, brassy move after another. Think of it: Thursday he held out of his lineup not only the man with more homers than all but four men who have ever played the game (Rodriguez) but also the man who hit more home runs the last two years than anyone else in the sport (Curtis Granderson).
You think that was the kind of maneuvering he was looking to do in the 171st game of the year? But he did it. The moves didn’t work out, but he did them, and owned them. They were the decisions of a confident manager, and an assertive manager, which is precisely the kind of manager the Yankees are always going to require. Maybe that doesn’t matter on the bottom-line scorecard on which the manager is always judged. But it should count for something.
“There are a lot of good hitters in that room and to be able to shut them all down is surprising to me,” Girardi said when the sweep was complete, shaking his head, acknowledging what all managers must admit more often than they like: there simply aren’t enough buttons to push when the human beings who play the game are exposed as just that — human.
“And some of the guys who replaced the other guys are really good major league players, too, that have had a lot of success in their career. Collectively they just weren’t able to get it done.”
And individually, neither was Girardi.
In the context of any other manager’s job on the planet, he would be viewed as untouchable, a man who has delivered four playoff appearances and one title in five years on the job, who manages the 162 as well as anyone can day to day and who this year, in the October crapshoot, stood bold and tall in trying to impose his will on the script he was handed.
But these are the Yankees, with their annual mission of Commissioners Trophies, and he will always be the man who replaced the man who delivered four of them in a five-year span. There is always a coterie of Yankees fans who believe there is someone, anyone, out there who is better than Girardi, who grow weary if his style, his approach … and the fact the number on his back has been stuck on 28 for three years now, and counting.
For now his bosses don’t seem to agree and that’s a good thing. In losing this October, Girardi showed a portion of his managing chops that hints at success in future ones. Not everything Girardi touched turned to gold. Enough did. These are good hands the Yankees are entrusted to.