Davidoff: Girardi loses leverage for contract talks

On this most important day for the Yankees on the field, they received some welcome news before A.J. Burnett even pulled his car into the players' lot at Yankee Stadium:

In this still teetering economy, they're going to save a few bucks on their manager.

Have you been following that "Joe Girardi to the Cubs" chatter? Turns out it was nothing more than that. The Cubs announced Tuesday that Mike Quade, who replaced Lou Piniella in August as the team's interim manager, gets the full-time opportunity to end the organization's 102-year wait for a World Series title.

The Cubs didn't wait for Girardi's season to conclude with the Yankees. Didn't care about presenting the image of going after the big gun to their fans. Cubs general manager Jim Hendry passed on Girardi four years ago, when he hired Piniella, and Hendry has done so again.

Which means that Girardi can't get cute when the Yankees' season ends, whether it's this week or two weeks from now. As an impending free agent, and with the Yankees wanting him back, Girardi will have nothing to stand on besides his impressive record.

"I worry about now," Girardi told Yankees beat reporters Tuesday. "I don't worry about next year. None of us knows what life holds for us next year. I try to concentrate on what is at hand."

Uh huh. Girardi played his situation extremely close to the vest, but he knows how to work it. When he agreed to manage the Yankees three years ago, he picked up a few more bucks because the Dodgers also wanted him.

I don't buy that Girardi wanted to manage his hometown Cubs that badly. He's running the team with baseball's highest payroll, and he gets along extremely well with the Steinbrenner family and general manager Brian Cashman - no small thing, Girardi knows, after getting fired from the Marlins for clashing with their leadership.

Yes, he can look miserable in those postgame media sessions, yet my sense is that he doesn't take that stuff home with him. He twists, turns, spins and obfuscates for 15 minutes, then lets it go and heads home.

The Yankees like Girardi because he takes his work very seriously, and - perhaps scarred by his experiences in Florida - he understands the importance of functioning in sync with the rest of the organization. As a manager, he is very open to new ideas.

Is he perfect? Of course not. If he's superior to his predecessor, Joe Torre, when it comes to game and roster management, he lacks Torre's people skills. Such is life. You accept trade-offs.

Girardi's and Torre's most common trait might be their ferocity at the bargaining table. Without the Cubs, however, Girardi's only potential threat is, "I won't manage anywhere." Not very convincing.

Whenever their season ends, the Yankees must get to work on re-signing Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. That will take some doing. Girardi, on the other hand, just became a hanging curveball.