Consequences of Girardi's Excess of Rest Over Success

From smothered hot bats to being far too precautionary to unnecessary days off, Joe Girardi is not putting some of his players in the best position to succeed. On an aging roster, players do require more days off than younger players but Girardi’s rest over success mentality he has exhibited throughout this season has prevented the Yankees from reaching their full potential in 2015.

As Yankee fans, we can come to the consensus that the 2014 season was one that wasn’t always easy to watch – aside from the unforgettable Jeter moments that we’ll tell our kids and grandkids about someday, of course. But with an abundance of injuries across the board from pitching to position players, the Yankees couldn’t ever get into a rhythm. And it’s those injuries that just might be the worst thing that possibly could’ve happened to Joe Girardi from a managing standpoint.

In order to prevent the plague of injuries from striking the Yankees in 2015, Girardi has been completely cautious as a manager as he’s been giving hit players and his pitchers way too many days off. When Chris Young was arguably the team’s hottest hitter in April, Girardi continually started a slumping Carlos Beltran over young. Granted, this allowed Beltran to erase his slump but it smothered Young’s hot bat in the process.

Take Garrett Jones as another member of the team to be personally victimized by Girardi’s questionable lineup cards. Since the series in Seattle where Jones homered in back to back games including a game-winning 3-run shot in extra innings, Jones has only started in 3 of the team’s 9 games including a stretch of 5 straight days where he didn’t start. I’m not saying Jones is a superstar by any means, but if the man is swinging a hot bat and is on a power surge, I don’t see how you take him out of the lineup.

We recently saw the ill-effects of Michael Pineda’s 10-day absence from the mound. After a successful month of May with a record of 3-2 with a 3.00 ERA, Pineda was gifted 10 days of rest. In an attempt to keep his number of innings from getting too high too quickly for a guy with a history of injuries, Pineda has his rotation spot skipped one time through. In his return to the mound, Pineda was chased out of the game in the 5^th inning tossing just 4.1 innings giving up 9 hits and 5 earned runs in Baltimore June 12.

And how many times are Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller or other members of the bullpen going to magically become “unavailable” simply because they pitched one inning the day before? If they threw upwards of 30 pitches the day before, I absolutely understand but there’s no need to hold Betances out of a game because it would be his second game in a row in which he’s had to pitch.

Lastly, the young guns, Ramon Flores and Jose Pirela have also been adversely affected by Girardi failing to put hot bats in the lineup. If you don’t recall, Flores was sent back down to triple-A Scranton almost immediately following a 3-4 night against Max Scherzer. Additionally, Jose Pirela was sent down to Scranton even after hitting .429 in 4 games in June. This isn’t necessarily a “rest over success” issue but it is an issue of the hot bat not getting the starts and in this case, being sent down to triple-A in decisions that Girardi absolutely had major influence over.

Again, I do understand why Girardi is cautious as he is trying to prevent overworking his players to the point of injury. To this point, I personally haven’t noticed much of a difference as the number of injuries isn’t way out of the ordinary as far as too many of too little. So although Girardi’s rest over success has good intentions, it’s hurting the team more than it’s helping it and to make a long story short, it’s not making that big of a difference so he might as well play his regular starters, or the hot hand more often.

Article by: Chad Raines

Follow me on twitter @Chad_Rain

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