CHICAGO — One of the fun hobbies among a cadre of exacting Yankees fans is a game that could be called Daily Joe — the analysis, the re-analysis, the re-re-re-analysis, of all things Girardi, all the moves the Yankees manager makes and doesn’t make, his various and sundry lineups, his bullpen decisions.
He comes replete with a prop, that thick binder that has become something of his straight man in three-plus years on the job.
And Girardi often provides ample fodder for the feasters of the second-guess. His has not been a start to match the first six pixie-dust years of Joe Torre; from 1996-2001, the Yankees made the World Series five times, won four, came as close to winning a fifth as you can and, more important, across almost every day of those six years, almost every decision Torre made came up tails.
Some were by the book. Some were so far outside the box they belonged in the next county. Some defied logic. Some were slaves to logic. Whatever. Every time Torre needed a 6 to pull an inside straight, he got the 6. It worked out. Always.
Girardi’s ride hasn’t been so smooth. If Torre was a Great Communicator out of the Reagan mode, Girardi is significantly less than that. Girardi has won a title, but even that ride came amid waves of second-guessing, especially when he seemed to get caught up trying to out-manage the Angels’ Mike Scioscia in the AL Championship Series. To listen to some, he rates somewhere between Stump Merrill and Bucky Dent on the list of recent skippers.
And that is absurd, of course.
Girardi is a good manager. Is he great? He has his moments, but overall he resides just outside the list of the elites. But you know something? When you look up and down baseball, when you see some of the head-scratching specialists that populate so many dugouts in both leagues, it’s a splendid reminder that being good at this job is actually high, rare praise.
Chicago got a look at that this weekend. Chicago, you surely know, is Joe Girardi’s hometown. He went to Northwestern University. He broke in with the Cubs, came back to play for them late in his career. Across the final few months of last season, when Lou Piniella packed it in and new ownership took over the Cubs, the Girardi-to-Wrigleyville rumors began in earnest.
They never got anywhere. Mike Quade won enough games as Piniella’s interim replacement to earn the job permanently, Girardi re-upped with the Yankees, that was that.
These past three days and nights, we got a good, hard look at what Chicago lost and what New York retained. We saw the way Quade manages the Cubs. Now, in fairness, this is a small sample size. But time and again this weekend, when the lefty-hitting portion of the Yankees batting order was due up, you would look down to the Cubs’ bullpen down the left-field line and see . . . a Cubs left-hander who was just beginning to warm up.
That cost them twice Saturday: during the Yankees’ tie-breaking sixth inning and during their game-deciding ninth inning. Last night, Quade actually did bring Sean Marshall in to face Brett Gardner, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira in the seventh . . . but then opted to keep him in to face Alex Rodriguez leading off a tie game in the eighth. And A-Rod did what you’d expect, hammering a single to left that started the game-altering rally.
At the time, the Cubs’ bullpen was only starting to be roused to action.
This is the kind of thing you see a lot if you’re paying attention in baseball — managers who too often aren’t, for whom the game seems to be played at double-speed and they’re unable to keep up. It’s awfully hard to define what a “good” manager is, since even the best only have a direct impact on a handful of games out of 162. Bad ones are a bit more obvious, mismatches between the two even more so.
This was a mismatch (even if Girardi nearly unleashed fury by needlessly removing CC Sabathia after only 89 pitches). The Yankees won 10-4, won two out of three in the series. And proved they were the clear winners when they made certain Girardi would be spending this weekend in the first-base dugout, not the third.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com