IN PRAISE OF GIRARDI/HERE COME THE RED SOX
In our last entry, I went on at great length about the untimely manifestation of Coffee Joe earlier this week. I meant to provide perspective by also mentioning some praiseworthy things that Joe Girardi has done this year. In the heat of the moment, I lost track of that goal and didn’t go beyond my indictment of Coffee Joe. I want to correct that now. He has, within certain limitations, constructed an excellent batting order this year. The main innovation has been batting Nick Swisher second. This is an untraditional choice, since nine times out of ten managers will still bat a banjo-hitting middle infielder second instead of a power bat. Swisher has completely changed his approach this year. He’s walking less but hitting for a higher

THIS IS WHY I WORRY
Two small matters to discuss regarding Monday night’s game, and let’s not make too big a deal of this because the game was lost in the seven-run fifth, not because of anything Joe Girardi did later.

Coffee Joe made an unfortunate appearance yesterday. Those who have been reading since last year know that Coffee Joe, Joe Girardi’s over-managing alter ego, first manifested during last year’s playoffs, when Joe started making MOVES! BIG moves, running pitchers in and out of the game like he had a 43-man staff. Since then, Coffee Joe has largely been quiet, but every once in awhile he creeps out. It wasn’t when he yanked Curtis Granderson for Marcus Thames. That was a measured decision, even if it did distort the defense. No, the caffeinated action

FLABBERGASTED

Give Joe Girardi 10 points for pinch-hitting Jorge Posada for Curtis Granderson against tough lefty Hong-Chih Kuo, who coming into Saturday’s game had held left-handed hitters to a .000 batting average (0-for-24). Deduct 50 points for failing to pinch-hit for A.J. Burnett with runners on first and third and one out in the top of the fourth inning trailing the Dodgers 5-4. Burnett, in the process of being pounded for the fifth consecutive start, had nothing more to prove on Saturday -- he wasn’t better, despite much ballyhooed bravado after successful sideline and bullpen sessions -- and Girardi had nothing to prove to him; letting Burnett stay in so as to convey a message of confidence in him proved to be an oddly timed and foolhardy gesture. A real message of confidence

COFFEE JOE ATTACKS!

I hate second-guessing the manager and try hard to restrict this feature to first-guessing or just avoid the topic altogether, because for the most part it’s just not worth doing. However, there are times when I just can’t resist. I usually restrict such thoughts to the playoffs, but Friday night’s game against the Mets provided an example so excruciating, and so topical, that we must proceed.

With the Yankees trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the seventh, Frankie Cervelli led off with a double. This brought Chad Huffman to the plate. Huffman is neither experienced nor a particularly great hitter, but the manager has to keep in mind that as a rule, a righty hitting against a righty is generally not going to be at as large of a disadvantage as a lefty hitting

YOU CAN PROBABLY GUESS WHERE I’M HEADED WITH THIS ONE
It was a tougher weekend for the Yankees than I envisioned when I wrote last Friday’s entry. I expected the batters to adjust to Brett Cecil and Ricky Romero quickly rather than not at all and put Brandon Morrow down for three or four walks, not one. During Sunday’s broadcast, my colleague John Flaherty said, “Good pitching will stop good hitting,” but that eliminates either the chicken or the egg from the poultry farm. I prefer Casey Stengel’s version, “Good pitching will stop good hitting and vice-versa.” It’s not always clear where to draw the line between the pitcher’s stuff and the hitter’s treatment of it, not to mention the various lucky and unlucky bounces you get

MORE PRETENDING
One of the frustrations of watching baseball is when a team takes a player of limited skills and pretends him into being someone who can actually play. Ramiro Pena is a case in point. During the second game on Wednesday, Michael Kay remarked that Pena looked frustrated. Of course he’s frustrated—he can’t hit. Whatever the benefits his glove confers, Joe Girardi should know that intentionally inflicting Pena on the starting lineup in both ends of a doubleheader is just giving away offense. This is especially true when Kevin Russo, who has shown that he can hit a bit, is still on the roster. Russo isn’t a shortstop, but third base shouldn’t have been out of the question.

Before I get e-mail reminding me that Pena hit .287 last year, first, remember

WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN?
I grew up listening to old radio shows, the entertainment precursor to television. No, I’m not so old that I heard the Jack Benny show, “Gangbusters,” or “Lights Out!” when they first aired, but recordings have always been available on record or cassette (and now MP3). One of my favorites was the Shadow, the story of a vigilante with the “power to cloud men’s minds” so as to be invisible, a handy talent for driving the guilty nuts (or just shooting them, as he was more apt to do in his pulp adventures). At the beginning of each show, the Shadow’s grim laugh (sometimes voiced by Orson Welles) would rise up from swirling organ music and he would intone, “Who knows ... what EVIL ... lurks

Robinson Cano is now hitting .407/.444/.790 with eight home runs. It’s as if he has been possessed by the ghost of Rogers Hornsby, albeit a smiling, likeable Rogers Hornsby whose time in the afterworld has taught him that should he receive a second chance it would probably be more fun if he just got on with the hitting and stopped being so mean to everyone. As we discussed in a previous entry, Cano has had hot openings before—last year in fact—before losing the thread. That said this is a whole other flavor of hot. Cano has been more disciplined, and the results have been unworldly, or afterworldly, or any other –ly you’d like to use, and if he maintains his disdain for first pitches and pitcher’s pitches and trans-fat pitches and all the other bad-for-you

COFFEE JOE’S CANDOR
Credit Joe Girardi for coming clean in a way that was uncomfortable to watch in the aftermath of Sunday’s non-intentional walk to Kendry Morales. The good news for Girardi’s conscience is that the blast didn’t lose the game, it simply put it out of reach. The question is why he second-guessed his decision in the first place. Marte used to be the kind of lefty who could do more than spot work, but that doesn’t seem to be the case after his injuries. Morales, a switch-hitter, is a better hitter from the left side than the right, and normally you would want to turn him around. The forgoing should be inoperative when turning him around means letting him face a lefty who is no longer prepared to retire right-handed hitters regardless of their