The friggin' NYY can't even lose right. They were supposed to stretch Cle out to five games and make CC and Fausto both work 6 innings .

Now Joe can go to his job as a funeral home director.

The Wilpons will make Willie available; perhaps straight up for Joba? Best named mentioned as Torre's replacement: Valentine. Jeter will lose his mind.

Tough to tell if the Yankees are going towards the mid 90's cycle (big names going away, youth talent coming up form the farm), or into the mid 80s/early 90s part (angry at not getting his title, Steinbrenner decides to throw even more money at big names who are more or less past their prime).

I think that we'll know for sure this offseason, if he fires Cashman, re-signs A-rod, or tries to make FA moves going after Smoltz, Andruw, Isringhausen, etc.

Absolutely no Bobby V.!
Joe was at his best with Don Zimmer as his bench coach -- he had a man with 50 years of baseball knowledge to bounce ideas off of. Lately, the bench coach was serving more as a training spot for future managers.

I think Cashman should go. Think about it. A team that makes $100,000,000 more than most teams should be expected to win more than anyone...and Steinbrenner's been incredibly patient by allowing consistent lower results (can't even finish an ALDS...Martin or Showalter would've been toast the first time that happened).

So the blame, it would seem, should be directed at Cashman. After all, other teams can build championship calibre clubs for far less. If they have a new manager next year, they should also have a new GM. If they stick with Torre, they should also have a new GM. Cashman is wasting money.

I absolutely agree that Torre was, as you say, "not a perfect manager, but a perfect man for the job." I suspect that his talent of keeping an even keel in the clubhouse in the face of management and media pressures would be all the more valuable if the Yankees plan on integrating their home-grown young talent, rather than bartering it away.

I also suspect that, while we as fans focus on in-game strategy as the core of what makes a good manager, in the real world it is a relatively minor aspect of what a manager brings to a successful team.

The difference between the 1996-2001 Yankees and the more recent "chokers" is simple: starting pitching. The earlier editions had a couple of aces, plus at least a couple others who usually went deep into games. The last few years, they've tried to patch together a staff with aging veterans and overpriced free agents.

This isn't Torre's fault; it's Cashman's, or whoever was making the offseason decisions. If the Yankees were serious about competing for a title in 2007, they should have done more about building the rotation. They entered the season with a patchwork rotation and paid the price.

Cashman deserves credit for building the farm system... but it certainly took him a long time to do it. About a decade, in fact. And again, if the Yankees were serious about winning now, they didn't do a good job of building a winning roster.

I don't understand where all this magical pitching depth was supposed to come from. There was noone available or worth signing in the last year. Should he have overbid for Zito, Lilly, or Meche? Traded Hughes and Joba for Santana? The Yankees have faced the same uphill battle that any former dynasty faces when you have an aging, overpriced team. You try to rebuild younger while adding stopgap pieces in hopes that it does not all fall over. It almost did fall over this year, but they at least got to the playoffs. They didn't turn into the Red Sox 2006. Yes, their rotation was a disaster all year and through the playoffs, and that's what cost them, but not a single yammering nabob has given a reasonable argument for how their rotation could have been better (other than not signing Kei Igawa).

but not a single yammering nabob has given a reasonable argument for how their rotation could have been better

Well, at least there's one point of similarity between Yankees and Mets fans - both complain about the front office's inability to find the magical "ace" that simply isn't out there.

Festus, run down Cashman's FA pitchers signed over the last 5 years. Has he done anything right in that dept since the Javier Vasquez miss? Hard job to be sure, but he has failed repeatedly for years.

1) trading Ted Lilly for Jeff Weaver
2) opting for Javier Vazquez over Curt Schilling in the 2003-04 offseason
3) leading the charge to sign Carl Pavano in December 2004.
Igawa is just the latest flop, Cashman has been missing for years. Signing bad pitchers is his signature move. After a decade in management he comes to realize he has no eye for talent, hands off the draft, and lets players develop. Nice, but too little, too late.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Cashman had nothing to do with the Pavano signing (or Jared Wright, for that matter). That was all The Boss.

(1) Would Ted Lilly really have the success in the AL East he's had in the NL?
(2) Iirc Schilling didn't want to come to NY
(3) Lots of teams wanted Pavano

The bottom line is Cash learned from his mistakes (and nb other teams made similar errors, cough, Clement, cough). Sign free agent pitchers, especially from the NL, for long term contracts is a mug's game. Draft talent yourself. And lo and behold, just from last season's draft we got Kennedy and Joba, who look at least number 2 or number 3 rotation men. Yeah, let's fire Cash.

Andy Pettite 2007 was a great signing that probably saved their season. Sure, there were others that were bad, and I am not claiming that Cashman's record is spotless, but some of the bad has been a result of constrained options and decision-making authority or also b/c Cashman has refused to trade what little blue chip talent (i.e. Hughes & Joba) that has developed over the past 2 or so years for someone like Beckett. It's not like Ted Lilly is the difference maker in any universe. Vasquez and Weaver were both good, sensible acquisitions at the time that just didn't pan out, and if you're killing Cashman for trading for one aging, expensive pitcher (Johnson) and not signing another aging, expensive pitcher (Schilling), you're asking for a GM that makes decisions by crystal ball. Signings of Johnson, Pavano, Wright, and Igawa turned out bad, but they were the kind of risk/reward signings that a team like the Yankees can absorb and hope you're not absorbing too much dead weight (which, of course, was the result). But all this was essentially trying to buy time while the farm develops. In fact, Cashman's bad-to-good ratio compares well with Theo Epstein (remember Clement, Lugo, Gagne, etc.), it's just that the Red Sox are further along in developing excellent prospects, which pushed them over the top, along with the adjustments by Beckett and re-emergence of Lowell (which is part luck).

You can't have a manager manage forever. It's time for Torre to go. He's become much worse in the in game management and while the Bronx Zoo isn't back in effect he also has not handled the A-Rod situation very well. If you're one of Torre's guys he's got your back. If you're not one of Torre's guys then it's under the bus for you.

It's time for someone who doesn't have preconceived notions about the players built from being their manager for 12 years.

If you're one of Torre's guys he's got your back. If you're not one of Torre's guys then it's under the bus for you.

EXACTLY! He hung Giambi out to dry in the past and the way he handled A-Rod in the 2006 playoffs was atrocious. This came back in spades last night during what is likely his farewell postgame presser:

Torre almost threw A-Rod under the bus last night...To be more accurate he threw Jeter a life preserver...

Asked about getting five men the first two innings and only scoring one, Torre replied, "We just haven't been able to get the one hit to get us over the hump. Ya know, Derek got a base hit with two out--but--um--er--we just haven't been able to manufacture like we did most of the year."

A hit with two outs, Joe? Too bad Captain Calm Eyes thought hits with one out were for wimps. He had 3 or 4 inning ending DPs this series.

The implication or blame here is clearly directed at the "non-Torre-Guys" Abreu and A-Rod. As if that one two-out, nobody-on hit early in the game absolves Jeter for a horrendous series? But Joe singled him out for praise and nobody else.

"obscure which team is best?" There was no obstruction. The Indians are clearly the better team.

If it's so clear that the Indians are the better team, why did they lose every contest to the Yankees during the regular season?
Realism: the two teams are very comparable in overall talent. The Indians have clearly superior 1 & 2 pitching; the Yankees have plainly better overall hitting.

Mr. Furious:
He hung Giambi out to dry in the past...
Maybe, but he stood up for Giambi when the team wanted to try to get him to agree to go to the Minors to rehab and Giambi most definitely didn't want to go. And that worked out. I bet Giambi is one of Torre's biggest supporters.

He did nothing for Giambi in that scuffle, the team had no leverage beyond destroying the player in the press. They folded, rightly so. Giambi, emboldened, promptly knifed Arod in the back as soon as his stroke reappeared. Good stuff all around, no?

For yankee fan above, Ted Lilly pitched 3 full seasons of AL East ball in Toronto so why say he hasn't pitched in AL East? As a full time starter, he won 12/10/15 games, not exactly chicken feed, tho his ERAs were high.
For festus above, Mike Lowell in the last 8 seasons has avg 91 RBI incl an off year in 05. That is lucky? In 06 he had one of the all time 3B best seasons fielding ever, yet the myopic AL mgrs/coaches gave Gold Glove to E. Chavez, just like they gave R. Palmiero a 1B Gold Glove in a season in which he played exactly one game at 1B.

Saying the Yankees are a better team than the Indians based on the regular season record is baloney. Baseball teams are streaky. The Indians and Red Sox had the best record in baseball at 96-66. This does not mean that they went 4-3 every week. The Indians and Yankees played when the Tribe was not playing well and the Yankees were. Go to the MLB website and compare statistics. The Indians beat the Yankees in just about every pitching category you can find.

Lowell didn't just have an "off year" for the Marlins in '05, he was absolutely dreadful in a way that raised legitimate questions about whether he was cooked and in decline. He was a salary dump for the Marlins, and a risk for the Red Sox that paid off.

I would be very happy to have Joe Torre as manager here in Milwaukee if he would be willing to end his Major League career where it began, and if owner Mark Attanasio would have the foresight to pull off the deal.

Dave,

I assume you were talking about me. But, plainly, I did not say that the Yankees are a better team than the Indians. You must have misread.
Go to the MLB website and compare statistics. The Indians beat the Yankees in just about every pitching category you can find.
Indeed. And the Yankees had better hitting overall. As I said, the two teams are just about even.

Abe,
He did nothing for Giambi in that scuffle
Torre put Giambi in the line-up every day on the road trip following the report, though he was batting under .220.

Giambi, emboldened, promptly knifed Arod in the back as soon as his stroke reappeared. Good stuff all around, no?
Ah. I thought we were talking about the question of how Torre treats his players. Now I see that it's just another opportunity for you to take cheap shots at any old Yankee.

Got it now. Carry on.