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It's the Last Place Anyone Expected to Find Yankees
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Late Friday afternoon, Torre fired back in defense of his longtime lieutenant:
"It's very unfair to lay this at the feet of Mel Stottlemyre," Torre said. "He's one of the most honorable people and the best pitching coach I know. . . . If people aren't aware of that . . . then they haven't been paying attention."
Here, more so than anywhere else, you can't fire the players -- unless you know of teams that are in the market for washed-up stars making between $15 million-$20 million per season.
Torre himself is probably safe for now. Not only is he owed another $19 million on his current contract, but such a firing would almost certainly backfire on Steinbrenner, since Yankees fans have not forgotten -- as Steinbrenner apparently has -- the four World Series titles Torre won from 1996 to 2000.
Another potential target, should the Yankees' malaise drag on, is General Manager Brian Cashman, who already has lost much of his power to Steinbrenner's Tampa-based cadre of advisers, and who is responsible for such ill-fated acquisitions as Javier Vazquez and Kevin Brown.
"It's justified to look at this team and wonder what's going on and what we're going to do to fix it," said veteran pitcher Mike Mussina. "The only thing that's unfair is to point the finger at one or two people and say, 'This is the reason this is happening.' It's not one or two people."
In hindsight, the reasons for the Yankees' early-season downfall are obvious: Years of short-sighted free agent signings that valued gaudy stats and Q ratings over character and career trajectories. A systematic self-plundering of the team's own farm system to acquire more expensive pieces, leaving the Yankees almost completely without usable prospects. And a disregard for the aging process that seems to be swallowing the talents of many of the Yankees' core players.
"Right now, we stink," Torre said before the game. "When you know what the [problem] area is, that doesn't mean you can automatically straighten it out."
Bellamy Road, Steinbrenner's highly touted colt, races Saturday afternoon in the Kentucky Derby, which means The Boss could be back in his owner's box at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. And soon thereafter, unless things turn around quickly, someone could be heading to the glue factory.
