So Colin Cowherd is a primary, almost obsessive, topic here on IJWMFTT.  I'll gladly make this concession: I don't think he's some kind of failure.  I don't think he lacks entertainment.  What I do think is that he goes out of his way to be outspoken to the point that he won't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

In an instance when Colin is having a solid show about Joe Torre, he still can't help but be part of this bit of bandwidth.  He had Steve Phillips on to discuss the Torre situation.  Phillips had this to say:

"When they (managers) are on you, you try harder.  When you try harder, you fail more."

Now, as a believer in employing sabermetric principles, I am one of the few of the opinion that a manager has a noteicebale impact on the team.  Batting orders, pitching changes, pinch hitters, pinch runners, bunt/steal - all of these impact a team's ability to produce outs on defense whilst increasing team EqA on offense. 

According to Bill James, this all adds up to 11,000 decisions per year.  Granted, 10,000 of those decisions may be uniform amongst all managers, thus the impact a manger has can be felt in less than 10 percent of their decisions.  But ask people if they think Bob Melvin and his management of his pitching staff had an impact on the team, and they would have to say yes (See a link to a good story about this on UltraMega's blog - Crashburn Alley in my favorites).

Where I do agree with the sabermetricians is that a manager does not impact whether a specific hitter/pitcher records a hit/out on a given at bat.  Phillips doesn't want a rah rah guy in the clubhouse.  Frankly, I'm ambivolent about a screamer.  It's fun for the fans, but we're talking about the actual management of a team here.  One could say that people would try less if they had to work for a screamer.  So Phillips' conclusion is accurate, since TRYING LESS=FAILURE.

Thus, Phillips' logic arriving to that conclusion is off kilter.  "When you try harder, you fail."  Huh?  If Manny Ramirez hits the ball he hit last night 150 times, and winds up on first base all 150 of those times, his slugging percentage would be slashed by 40 percent (accounting that he will also have 30+ homers).  In this instance, like most, trying less led to failure.

The Yankees are a results based organization.  If Joe is quiet and fatherly Joe, and the team goes to the World Series, we aren't complaining about him not being a rah rah guy.  If you want to bash the Yankees, bash them for getting rid of a guy who usually pushes the right buttons.  But understand, someone can probably come in and push those buttons for less cash, rah rah or otherwise.