I’m a big fan of Joe Girardi and was very happy when he was hired to manage the Yankees after the 2007 season. Unlike a lot of fans, I don’t blame him for the team’s third place finish last year – I’d chalk that up to just not being as good as the Rays and Red Sox, as well as some significant injuries to key players. That being said, I’m going to have a hard time defending Girardi against detractors after reading about his decision to go with Xavier Nady over Nick Swisher in right field.
In managing a baseball team, like most other endeavors, I would imagine that the name of game is minimizing mistakes. For the most part, you can’t control injuries, opposing pitching, umpiring, and a host of other variables, so you should try your best to make the right decisions regarding those things over which you exercise complete control, like choosing your right fielder. (It’s like Donald Rumsfeld said: there are knowns, unknowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. It seems that one of the key jobs of the baseball manager is to totally nail decisions regarding the knowns, and do your best to prepare for and react to the unknowns).
Choosing Nady over Swisher is one of those mistakes that is obvious to everyone, yet, somehow, happens anyway. It’s like the idea of batting Luis Castillo leadoff or signing Barry Zito or Gary Matthews, Jr. to enormous contracts. Apparently, everyone in the world knows it’s a bad idea except for the person who made the decision.
Oh, well. Hopefully, for the sake of the Yankees, they won’t make a similar mistake and put Melky Cabrera in center field. Brett Gardner probably won’t be much better, but he likely will be better. If it were up to me, and I was forced to have Nady in right, I would just take my chances on his defense and put Swisher in center. His 100 walks will result in a lot of runs over the course of the season.