On the Yankees beat

"He does not anticipate any changes on the coaching staff"

At least move Pena to 3rd and Meacham to 1st.
Please?

No changes?

Bobby Meacham should be boiled in oil!

Meacham has to go, he was awful.

Mariano and surgery are not something I ever want to see together but he came back from TJ didn't he? I guess he can get past this.

Speaks very poorly for Girardi's judgment.

There've been various predictions out there about who would go/stay, the most extreme I saw was that only one current coach was completely safe.

If Cashman stays, and Girardi officially makes the idiotic recommendation that his whole coaching staff should be retained, Cashman should just take it out of his hands and force a minimum of two changes.

But we know Girardi is not very forthcoming. In yesterday's statement he seemed to be saying all that would be decided in future talks (presumably with FO). Maybe he's just stonewalling today.

Time will tell.

I think some of the older posters on here hate Meacham because of his playing days.

I didn't see him do anything great or horrible that should cost him his job - but then again I'm pretty easy going when it comes to base coaches. I would keep Eiland (consistancy at the pitching coach is huge) Robbie Thompson and Tony Pena are fine. No issues with Kevin Long. And much praise has to be given to Mike Harkey for his work with the relievers.

More athletic seems to say that Giambi and Abreu won't be here next season. If that's the goal though - it would say to me that Jorge Cantu would be a great pick for first base. He's got pretty good speed for a corner infielder. Also I think that Mike Cameron in CF would be an outstanding addition. Yes he's 35 but he's still a superior defensive outfielder.

I watched Meacham a lot this year and I saw him getting confused and thus confusing runners on the bases and I believe he never really took the speed of a runner into account when he made his decisions.
Sure, he was a disaster as a player when he was with the Yanks but I was actually happy to see him back in uniform when I saw he was a coach with the Padres last season, I like to see guys stay in the game or come back to it. Much like I was pleasantly surprised to see the 1B coach in San Francisco is our old friend Roberto Kelly.

Meacham blows as a 3rd base coach, PERIOD.
A lousy 3rd base coach can cost you 5-6 games a year, and you won't even realize it.

And that's my final answer.

Chip,

You didn't see anything that warrants Meacham getting fired?

How about waving in Chen Ming Wang on a base hit when the Yanks had a big lead in that game in Houston? Wang struggled just to get to 2nd the batter before that fateful injury.

I think most of us agree that Meacham is a terrible 3B coach, but I can't in good faith blame him for the Wang injury in the same way that I can't blame Dave Eiland for Phil Hughes' broken rib or Joba's bout of shoulder tendinitis.

It was a freak injury and that's the extent of it.

That said, Meacham should be replaced because he's not a good 3B coach.

We'll disagree on this one Viper.
You say a freak injury.
I say it was an injury waiting to happen and it could have been avoided.

Wang was struggling from the moment that he reached base. He doesn't know how to run the bases properly as do most pitchers in the AL. They don't practice that as they do in the NL just as they don't practice bunting. He could have been held up at 3rd, but without anyone seeing that sequence again (as it was in June) it probably faded from most of our memories.

Also, Eiland had nothing to do with Hughes and Chamberlain as you say and I agree with that. Comparing what happened to those 2 guys and what happened to Wang is like comparing apples to oranges.

John,

But pitchers do run quite a bit. They do their normal running like every player does and they also do a lot of drills covering first base.

A lot of pitchers like Mo and Joba shag fly balls and run around in the outfield during BP.

What happened was Wang landed on his foot wrong rounding 3B and tore it up. The same thing could have happened if Wang ripped a double down the line and rounded first base on his way to second base.

Is Tony Pena supposed to stop Wang from running to 2B when he has an easy double?

C'mon, these guys can't be that fragile. They are professional athletes, ya know.

If you remember the play in question, Wang was injured rounding the bag and still stumbled 60-70 feet to home plate and made it easily without even drawing a throw. There were two outs and Wang was off and running at second base with the crack of Jeter's bat.

That tells me waving Wang home was a no-brainer, so I'm not going to kill Meacham for that.

You can rip Meacham for a lot of things, but Wang's injury is not even on the radar.

Viper,
I agree, these guys learn in little league how to run the bases so Meacham can't be blamed for Wang's injury, but he can be blamed for sending his starting pitcher and putting him in peril when the Yanks already had a big lead. I am not angry about the injury, as I believe it would have happened sometime, but the fact that he would have gassed his own pitcher for a meaningless run is what bothered me.

I can live with Meacham at Third Base, to blame him for Wang's injury is incredibile. Wang is a professional athlete who does running practically everday to stay in shape. His foot gave out. He wasnt give a signal to stop and go. His foot gave out,pure and simple. In the beginning of the year Meacham was a bit strange with some of his aggressive signals to the runners but as the year progressed less issues popped up. He had to learn the runners and the opposing OF's. If Girardi is comfortable with him than let him stay.

The change that I would like to see is Pena as the bench coach.

Jim,

It was only a 3-0 game and Jeter hit a bases loaded single to right field with two outs.

Wang ended up scoring the 5th run because 2 runs scored on the play.

One could argue that 3 or 4 runs is a big lead, but I don't agree.

We see teams overcome a lot less, especially with some pretty good thumpers in that Astros lineup like Tejada, Carlos Lee, Hunter Pence, and Lance Berkman - not to mention playing in a small ballpark.

You can see the replay for yourself here:

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200806152935802&c_id=nyy

You guys win.
Meacham's clean.

I still think that he $ucks!!!!

And Wang can't run the bases.