Whistling Past the Graveyard

After last night’s game, I am ready to officially announce that I have no hope left for the Yankees putting together a streak of out-of-their-minds baseball that will vault them into the 2008 playoffs. It is not going to happen. I drew up a 5-point plan for making it happen eight days ago, and that plan has somewhat come to fruition: Melky got demoted, Matsui had a clean rehab and returned to the lineup. Hughes, however, did not excel at Scranton and may end up staying there through this weekend, so I was wrong about that one. Chamberlain is trying to come back, but it is extremely unclear when his return will happen, if at all.

The fifth point, though, is the problem:

“Jason Giambi, Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter's offensive games come alive, and with the re-insertion of Matsui, the lineup consistently performs to the level that they were expected to coming in to the season.”

Jeter and Cano’s bats have looked a little livelier of late, but The Big G is just an abomination. It has gotten to the point where he is literally only good for one of the three true outcomes in each of his at-bats: a walk, a strikeout or a homerun. Regardless of the statistical analysis camps that will claim that these types of players are useful and helpful for offenses, having this version of Jason Giambi as the #5 hitter in the lineup is doing absolutely nothing for the Yankees.

Last night’s game was lost by Johnny Damon’s inability to remember how to play center field. However, more games this season have been lost thanks to major failures by his buddy The Giambino in situations hitting with men on base. The fact that he has remained implanted in the lineup, consistently hitting right behind A-Rod no less, boggles my mind. Yes, there was one month of this season when Giambi was killing the ball to all fields—but those days have quickly vanished, replaced by his pull-happy “swing for the fences” mental approach to hitting. Kevin Long has been quoted before saying that he tells Jason all the time to hit to left field, but for whatever reason he just simply can’t do it.

Giambi is synonymous with the entire 2008 team. They both have had limited moments of success this year, but neither have come close to sustaining them. They have had a ton of opportunities to produce runs in ways that aren’t home runs, and yet they can never get it done on any type of consistent basis. Defensively neither has been very good, but the defense has not cost them as many games as the poor offense. Thankfully, they will no longer be around once the calendar hits October.

It’s funny, Giambi came to New York talking a big talk about wanting to win a championship, loving the Yankees tradition, etc. Yet he has never changed his game to win a championship. He couldn’t adjust to being a DH, even though he gets paid tens of millions (now twenties of millions) of dollars a year to basically do what the Yankees need him to do to help them. He brought the BALCO baggage with him but at least handled that media firestorm carefully and decently. As a result of his BALCO baggage, he has been on the DL or banged up or somehow incapacitated for most of his time in pinstripes.

And, of course, the team hasn’t won anything in the life of his 7 year deal. That World Series in 2003, the only one he (hopefully) will ever be a part of, he was mysteriously out of the lineup to start Game 5 with some type of phantom injury, even though it was oh, the WORLD SERIES and the Yankees were coming off a heartbreaking extra-inning loss in Game 4. Not to mention he was one of their biggest offensive players that year (that game somehow had Giambi AND Alfonso Soriano out of the lineup, by the way).

Of course, in that game he pinch hits and hits a meaningless home run in the 9th inning, so apparently he wasn’t hurt badly enough to not be able to jack a meaningless home run out of the park.

That kind of thing will be what I remember of The Jason Giambi Era—meaningless home runs that don’t provide much beyond letting Jason pose and still have the numbers that make him out to be a dangerous power hitter. Really, he is a selfish player who made zero adjustments or sacrifices for this team in his 7 years with the Yankees. This year the coaching staff put all their faith behind Giambi being able to stay healthy and play first and be a middle of the order hitter.

He’s stayed healthy, he’s played first…but he hasn’t rewarded the Yankees’ faith with any real production. All in all, a bad case of misplaced faith in The Great Giambino, a Yankee that will not be missed when he’s in another team’s uniform come 2009.