Yankees Hope Girardi Is Not Just Another Joe

There’s still an Italian-American, ex-National League catcher/broadcaster named Joe in the dugout, but this season the Yanks have downloaded and installed Joe 2.0.   The Joe Girardi Era started in earnest on a cold April Tuesday night with a crisp 3-2 victory over Roy Halladay and the Toronto Blue Jays. Girardi’s main contribution to the victory was what he did not do. He resisted the temptation to start the bullpen parade in the seventh and he let Chien May Wang get out of trouble on his own, setting up the one-two punch of Chamberlain in the eighth and Mo in the ninth to nail down the win. It’s going to be hard, if not impossible, this season to avoid comparisons with Joe Torre (Joe 1.0) and not see everything as either a vindication or a criticism. I do get the feeling that if Torre had been managing there’s a good chance we would have seen Latroy Hawkins at least warming up in that seventh inning. But by letting Wang finish Joe 2.0 demonstrated patience and ... [link]