Below The Beltway

As speculation begins to mount about the future of Yankees manager Joe Torre, here’s a sampling of what’s being said in the media today.

First, The New York Times wonders if Steinbrenner’s firing instinct may be rusty:

George Steinbrenner?s April managerial scorecard:

1982 ? Bob Lemon, 14 games.

1985 ? Yogi Berra, 16 games.

2007 ? Joe Torre, 23 games?

Today is the last day of April, and Steinbrenner has a few hours left in which to jettison Torre as the Yankees? manager and put him in the class with Lemon and Berra. He fired them despite having said that they would keep their jobs the entire season no matter what.

Steinbrenner made no such pronouncement about Torre before this season, but that won?t stop him from making a change if he feels one is warranted.

No signs have emerged from Tampa, Fla., that Steinbrenner will change managers. But the talk intensified yesterday after the Yankees lost another game to Boston, their fifth loss in six games and two weekends with the Red Sox. Steinbrenner was unhappy with the sweep in Boston last weekend, and he was unhappy with the results of the series at Yankee Stadium

(…)

Steinbrenner did not react reflexively yesterday, but he didn?t have to. Today is a day off for the Yankees, and Steinbrenner has fired managers on days off before.

He hasn?t fired a manager since 1995, and even that act was not a clear-cut dismissal. There was some suspicion then that Buck Showalter wanted to be fired and induced that change.

You have to go all the way back to Stump Merrill in 1991 to find a clearly fired Yankees manager, so Steinbrenner may be out of shape with the procedure. He may need time to work up to it. Add, too, the fact that Steinbrenner is more than 15 years older than he was then. In his condition today, he may need time to generate the psychic energy needed for a change.

Until he makes a change or the Yankees emerge from their awful start, people will talk.

Something tells me that if George Steinbrenner wants to fire someone, he’ll remember how to do it. If worse comes to worse, he can watch old clips of the Billy Martin days to get him in the mood.

Next, Ken Rosenthal makes the rather obvious point that firing Torre would be a really stupid idea:

Anyone in Knee-jerk America – that’s you, mutinous occupants of the blogosphere, talk-radio land and George Steinbrenner’s inner circle – ever imagine what the Yankees might look like without Joe Torre?

Didn’t think so.

Torre shouldn’t be fired Monday. He shouldn’t be fired Tuesday. He probably shouldn’t be fired at all this season, not when general manager Brian Cashman handed him a pitching staff that would make any manager look dumb.

Even Cashman could not have anticipated that four of the Yankees’ top six starters would get injured, though the losses of Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano do not exactly qualify as surprises.

The truth is, rival general managers have spent years waiting for this moment – the moment when the Yankees’ pitching staff would be caught in a difficult transition between old and young.

Now that the moment is here, the manager is a peripheral issue.

The Yankees’ veteran starters are either past their primes or injury-prone. Their young starters are too inexperienced to make an impact. Their bullpen includes too many one-inning relievers – not that a long man would help all that much, seeing as how the Yankees need one in virtually every game.

In other words, as I’ve said myself, the Yankees have a pitching problem not a managerial problem. If anyone in the front office is to blame, it’s the person in charge of player acquisition, a guy by the name of Brian Cashman.

Finally, Mike Bauman expresses similar thoughts at MLB.com:

NEW YORK — Joe Torre should not be dismissed. In fact, he probably should be applauded for handling a nearly impossible situation with his usual calm dignity.

Reputable reports in the New York press on Saturday indicated that the Yankees’ manager’s job was in jeopardy due to the team’s recent slide.

This sort of thing comes with the territory, but the Yankees’ problems have nothing to do with shortcomings on the part of the manager. New York’s problems can be explained in three words: pitching, pitching, pitching.

Before Kei Igawa stopped the bleeding with an emergency long, long, long relief appearance on Saturday, the Yankees had allowed six or more runs in eight consecutive games. The last time that happened was in 1933. That 74-year span clearly illustrates how consistently, epically bad the Yankees’ recent pitching has been.

But when you’re dealing with an owner so focused on winning above all, questions of what the problem really is don’t always matter. If Steinbrenner is looking for someone to blame, as he often did in the 1980s and 90s when the Yankees were in the middle of an 18 year World Series Championship dry spell, the manager is the most obvious target. But just because Torre is an obvious target doesn’t mean he’s the right one.

Consider this, before Joe Torre came, the Yankees had not appeared in the World Series since 1981 and had not appeared in the post-season for 14 years. During this time, they had the distinction of being the only team to have a pitcher get a no-hitter and still lose the game. Despite the greatness that was Don Mattingly, the team was, by and large a joke.

Since Torre has been manager, the Yankees have appeared in the post-season every year, and appeared in the World Series six times while winning the Series four times. If that’s not the definition of a successful manager I don’t know what is.

Torre isn’t perfect, but he’s also not to blame for what’s going on now.