How the New York Yankees Can Win a World Series Without Joe Torre

Joe Torre, the manager of four World Series winning teams, has reportedly turned down a five million dollar contract plus playoff incentive money to manage the New York Yankees in 2008. As far as I'm concerned, being a fan of this World Series playing team since 1977, the New York Yankees are better off without Joe Torre and some of the players on that team. The New York Yankees need to do more than just find a viable replacement for Joe Torre to win another World Series.

For the last seven seasons, the Bronx Bombers have increased their payrolls to bring World Series Championships to the fans, but have failed miserably in this quest. It's not all the fault of Joe Torre, though over the years I've questioned many of his calls and his apparent lack of aggressiveness and craftiness that he used to show more of from 1996-2000. George Steinbrenner has been more than patient over this, allowing seven underperforming years to transpire, and yet, he and the organization still offered him a fat contract with incentives for doing good in the playoffs next year (reportedly 5 million for 2008 plus a million dollars for each playoff round the New York Yankees advance to, according to the New York Post online article by George King and Cassie Carothers October 18, 2007).

The New York Yankees management has forgotten that it takes role players who have character and good pitching to advance far into the playoffs and win another World Series with or without Joe Torre. They've gone out and spent over a billion dollars since 2000 in salaries for basically nothing. Players like Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, and Jason Giambi have consistently not done the job when it counted, yet they make millions of dollars to either be underperformers or get injured a lot like multi-million dollar pitching bust Carl Pavano, who pitched a whopping 2 regular season games this year for ten million dollars. I wonder if Pavano had to give any of that money back?

I could care less that the players like Joe Torre so much. If they really liked him, they would've come through and at least won 2-3 World Series in the last seven years. What these ungrateful and spoiled players like more is cashing their large checks, and being comfortably numb.

My solution to the New York Yankees playoff woes may be a bit painful for a couple of years, but unless they do these things, in my opinion, they will continue to do badly in the playoffs:

Get rid of Alex Rodriguez. This over-priced and arrogant New York Yankees player has all the nerve to reportedly expect more money via his greedy and arrogant agent after his shameful playoff performances over the last four years, including for this season as he didn't come through most of the time in the playoff series against Cleveland. Rodriguez has never gotten a team to the World Series, and won't ever either, in my view. He needs to take a dollar out his salary and buy himself some decency and character, which would be a dollars' more of character and decency he has now!

Rely more on the farm system. Back in the early and mid-1990's the Yankees farm system brought in such great players like Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Bernie Williams en route to their winning four World Series in five years (1996, 1998-2000) via the management of Joe Torre. This year, players like Joba Chamberlain were really helpful in getting the Yankees to the playoffs. It could be a couple of lean years for the New York Yankees by getting more playing time from farm system players, but bringing in more superstars hasn't worked.

The whole organization needs an attitude adjustment. From Boss Steinbrenner down, unless they quit throwing solely money at the lack of New York Yankees playoff success, this lack of winning a World Series nonsense is only going to continue. Think of the great role and character players brought in for less money like Dwight Gooden, Daryl Strawberry, Charlie Hayes, etc., who complimented the up and coming stars, superstars, and who even had a bit of redemption for a time like Strawberry and Gooden. It's time for the scouts and General Manager Brian Cashman to seek out more role players, not just superstars in the upcoming free agent draft. Not only this, but all the players making over 10 million a year (like Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada, Bobby Abreu, Jason Giambi, etc.), should have the decency and character to give back half of their salary for this year, following the example of college basketball coach Bob Knight, who gave back his base salary of $250,000 after a down year for Texas Tech in 2002-2003. In an article from March 2003 at ESPN.com, Knight reportedly commented, "I can remember talking to Ted Williams about this...Ted Williams not only turned down a raise but demanded a cut after one year in which he didn't play particularly well. He and I had a long talk about that and why he felt that way."

I'd be a monkey's uncle if any of these greedy and underperforming New York Yankees players like Rodriquez, Giambi, Damon, et al, would give back one dime the way Ted Williams and Bobby Knight did. You just don't see the decency and integrity anymore in most athletes, and now Yankees former manager Joe Torre could've had the decency to manage for a base salary that's still very posh (though a base pay cut from his 7.5 million 2007 salary according to the October 18, 2007 online article by AFP titled "Torre turns down offer to return as Yankees manager"), had he come back in 2008. But he, too, has also shown his greed and arrogance, in my view. Sure, managing for the World Series winning-obsessed Steinbrenner isn't the easiest thing in the world, but Joe Torre should realize that he's helped let the fans down, too, over the last seven years.

Bottom line: It starts at the top of the New York Yankees organization. It's time to build a team up from the manager on down with character, aggressive field play and management (now that Joe Torre is gone), not just high salaries and big egos in order to win another World Series.