Torre is living in the past with Rivera

Yanks' closer not nearly what he once was, but manager still overusing him

Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images

New York Yankees manager Joe Torre is supposed to be one of the game's great minds, but you wouldn't know it by how he's using Mariano Rivera, writes Mike Celizic.

Slide show

NBCSports.com’s All-Stars
Check out our predictions for the best players at each position in 2006.

updated 6:14 p.m. ET April 27, 2006

Mike Celizic
There is consternation in Yankee Nation. On Wednesday night, Mariano Rivera lost his second game of the season and saw his ERA climb to 4.91. The next morning, all the papers wrote extensively about whether this is a trend or a bump in the road.

But in all the hand-wringing over a loss to Tampa Bay in April, no one looked to put the blame where it belongs, which is squarely on the hunched-over shoulders of manager Joe Torre. And no one asked the real question, which isn’t, “Why did Mo blow the game,” but, “What was your most valuable player doing pitching two innings in a tie game against Tampa?”

Torre extemporized that Rivera hadn’t been pitching a lot and needed the work. But he didn’t need two innings of work. Soon enough, there will be plenty of opportunities for Rivera to pitch. Better to let him get a tad rusty than to burn him out by pitching him for two innings in tie games in April against the Devil Rays.

Story continues below ↓

The Yankees have been down this road before, and it leads to nowhere good. Rivera is in his tenth season as the team’s closer and his eleventh as a mainstay of the bullpen. He’s 36 years old, and he’s already well beyond the average shelf life of a major league closer.

And the Yankees can not live without him. For all the all-stars up and down their line-up, the players know there’s no one more important to the success of the team than the brilliant pitcher from Panama.

MESSAGE BOARDS
Sound off on your favorite MLB teams
So the last thing you want to do is burn him up by pitching him in non-save situations or using him for more than one inning at a time. But, going back to 2001, when Torre rode Rivera through the playoffs and lost the World Series because Rivera was too used up to get another six-out save in Game 7 against the D-Backs, That’s exactly what Torre has done.

Torre really wore him out in 2004, calling on him for too many two-inning saves and running him out to protect too many five-run leads, with the result ultimately being that he got beat by Boston in the ALCS. Last year, the manager took better care of Rivera and the pitcher rewarded him with one of the greatest years of his great career.

Interactive
You be the pitcher!
Take the mound vs. tough hitters in this game
In the off-season, the Yankees concentrated on beefing up the bullpen to have a better bridge to Rivera. Kyle Farnsworth, and 30-year-old hard-throwing righty, was signed to be the final span of that bridge.

The object of Farnsworth and the beefed-up pen was to avoid having to use Mo for multiple innings or in non-save situations. So far, it’s worked pretty well. In fact, the biggest problem before Wednesday was that Rivera had made only five appearances through 18 games; the Yanks either won by a landslide or lost, in either case obviating the need for a closer.

CONTINUED: What was Torre thinking Wednesday?

1 | 2 | Next >