After Missing Playoffs, Yankees Find Their Scapegoats

For the first time since 1993, baseball is holding their October party without the Yankees. Clearly people were going to pay the price for this abomination. The first scapegoats were named today, when the Yankees cut their ties to third-base coach Bobby Meachem and special pitching instructor Rich Monteleone. It's easy to see this as change for change's sake but there may be a more subtle message being sent to Joe Girardi.

Well, with Meachem's firing anyway. Monteleone charted pitches so it's hard to see what the motivation was there. Meachem wasn't the best third-base coach, he sent too many runners and earned ire for the way Chien-Ming Wang got hurt, but his closeness to Girardi probably hurt him more than any particular shortcoming. Whatever advice Meachem passed along did nothing to motivate Robinson Cano, in particular, while Larry Bowa, Meachem's predecessor, was regarded as the guy who kept him on the straight and narrow. Bowa is unlikely to leave Joe Torre's side in L.A. but whoever replaces Meachem will be charged with getting Cano back to where he was in 2007.

Any Yankee fan from the 80's knows that it wasn't warm memories of Meachem's pinstriped playing days that brought him back to the Bronx this season. Girardi hired Meachem to be his guy on a staff that was mostly put in place by higher-ups in the Yankee organization and his departure could be the first sign that the manager's seat may be warm if the Yankees make missing the playoffs a habit.

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