[DesertCat]

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Girardi was watching his starting pitcher, Scott Olsen, pick an argument with the plate umpire for shorting him one warm-up toss. Obviously distracted, Olsen promptly gave up a home run. When Olsen reached the dugout after the inning, Girardi grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into the tunnel.

"He didn't want me to worry about stuff like that anymore," Olsen said. "Coincidence or not, we've been playing well ever since."

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I will have to look for the story where Josh Johnson and his doctor basically said that Girardi leaving him in that game had nothing to do with his arm injury... and need for Tommy John Surgery... but all the blame thrown at Girardi eminates from Marlin's owner Jeffrey Loria -- not doctors or trainers or baseball professionals. It is unfortunate that Marchman has accepted the Loria story, but he likes to be controversial.

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I won't go thru the hocus pocus of statistics, but here they fail to account for the management-induced distractions. In the last three weeks of the 2006 season, with the knowledge that Girardi was going to be booted, the Marlins collapsed... I believe they went 4-13 or something like that to finish the season and skew their record. (not to mention the fact that they started 11-31 when the team was basically dismantled after Girardi was hired and he had a roster of 20 or so rookies). Indeed, you have it backwards -- Loria is the confirmed "red-ass" and Girardi was the man caught in the bad situation at a terrible time. He was hired to manage one team and then did his best to be successful with a very different team with no experience. As Girardi has said, he went through a lot that season and learned a lot...

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Loria is a red-ass, but that doesn't matter as he's the owner. But your essential point is that it's okay that Girardi grabbed a pitcher by the collar, and yelled at his owner during a game. I see those as tendencies for Girardi to lose his cool, but if you think those represent great judgement we'll have to disagree. I don't see Torre doing that crap.

But don't duck his record by calling it "hocus pocus statistics". He brutalized that staff, and you can't deny that those pitch counts and innings are totally unreasonable for 22 year old pitchers straight out of the minors. Whether Johnson's arm was injured by Girardi's terrible decision in that game we'll never know, but we know he was due for an injury the way Girardi flogged him all year. The D-Train's counts were abusive even for a veteran. And the proof is in how each of those pitchers has collapsed since that season.

And regardless of how many rookies were on that team, they performed well all year long, because they have very talented players (Cabrera, Uggla, Hanley Ramirez, Willingham). They performed well enough to win at least 5-10 games more than they did with a competent manager. This year they were even better but someone destroyed the starting staff.

And you think the team stopped playing because Girardi was due to be fired? Most of the team hated Girardi, but even if they loved him do you really think they would stop striving for the playoffs because he wouldn't be around? Maybe the fact he blew out his second best starters arm, and ran the rest of his starters out of gas might have had something to do with the collapse (49 runs in last 7 games)?

You better hope Girardi learned from the experience if he ends up managing the Yankees and those young pitchers.

And I mistyped my last paragraph, I was just pointing out it's clear Cashman isn't making those decisions. So your management hierarchy is screwed up and that's bad news.