The Yankees are Wasting Their Time With Jason Giambi
When the Yankees first acquired Jason Giambi, I thought he was a perfect fit - the perfect buy. Here was a guy that could hit balls over buildings in right, and up the gap in Yankee Stadium’s cavernous left-center. A .300 hitter who could hit 40 homers and knock in 120: where do I sign up?

By the 2003 All-Star Game - most certainly the last All-Star Game he ever played in - he was second to Derek Jeter as the most recognizable face on the Yankees. He won the Home Run Derby, and his legend grew.

Then, according to reports of his grand jury testimony, he stopped taking steroids. But no investigative journalism is needed - no qualifiers like “according to reports” or “according to secret testimony” is needed - to say that at the same time he stopped with the steroids, he stopped with the hitting. A staph infection in his eye, benign tumor, strained forearm, shattered reputation, and almost two full seasons of unproductive at bats later, the Yankees want him to go to the Minor Leagues.

I think that is a mistake. Giambi cannot learn to hit the ball better in the minor leagues. Giambi, a spray hitter - a high average hitter - in the Minors, became a needle hitter as he got stronger in the Major Leagues. That is, he threw a needle into his arm, or butt, or wherever, and decided to try to muscle the ball over the fence in right field with every swing, rather than take it to left field when the pitches were outside. He kept gravitating toward that new style, and nobody noticed. Sure, he still hit some balls to left field, but not as much. Infields started shifting to the right, knowing that he would try and pull the outside pitch.

But when he stopped cheating, his muscles - and hence his margin for error - got smaller. A non-juiced Giambi, at his best, is probably a .315 hitter with 25 homers. Again, where do I sign up? But a non-juiced Giambi that tries to hit like the juiced Giambi is a waste of space on the Yankees, and would be a waste of space in their minor league system. It is only a matter of time before Brian Cashman, George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre figure that out.