To the lay person, a vote of confidence might sound like a positive. You always want the confidence of your boss, so when a general manager says he has confidence in his manager, well, that sounds like the best possible thing. Right? Not to the sports fan. We’ve seen this song and dance plenty of times. Team is struggling. General manager or owner steps up and says he has complete confidence in the manager. Team slips a bit further. Manager gets fired.

In this way, Joe Girardi couldn’t have felt well after hearing Brian Cashman’s most recent comments. The supremely talented team, assembled by Cashman and helmed by Girardi, has been slipping of late, and more than a few fans have called for the manager’s head. That doesn’t seem to be in the immediate plans, but if we’re to believe that a vote of confidence puts the manager on the hot seat, Joe’s job may be on the line.

Sweeny Murti has Cashman’s gushing words about Girardi:

“I think Joe’s done an exceptional job,” Cashman said. “We’re scuffling right now for three weeks, but he’s not humped over, slumped over, he’s not down and out and woe is me or depressed or on edge or tight. He’s keeping his guys up, he’s keeping them positive.”

“He’s doing everything he needs to do,” Cashman concluded.

Translation: win or else. For his part, Girardi understands the implication. “I know the drill here,” he said. “You win or you go home.” Indeed. It’s a foregone conclusion that if the Yankees fail to make the playoffs for a second straight year, Girardi will spend the off-season tidying his resume.

Murti notes the lack of attractive in-house options should the Yanks can Girardi before the season ends. Realistically, if they so chose that path it would have to be Tony Pena. The 2003 AL Manager of the Year has been with the Yankees for a few years now. Not only would he be the leading option for a mid-season managerial change, but he’d have to be high on the list should Girardi not make it to 2010.

This isn’t the first time Girardi has received a vote of confidence from the Yankees brass. Back in September Hank Steinbrenner noted that “Joe will be back.” Yes, that sounds like a good thing, but again, the translation was, “Joe will be back, and if he loses again he’s out.” Yes, we like reading far, far into these statements given to the media.

Thankfully, the Yanks turned around a few weeks of poor hitting last night in their 8-4 win over the Braves. A win tonight would put the thought of firing Girardi further back in our minds.

Over the weekend, a crack appeared in the Yanks’ Front Office façade. It wasn’t an outburst from Hank or a strongly-worded press release from Howard Rubenstein. No one was fired, and no one was put on notice.

The crack was the rather public spat over the Alex Rodriguez situation. It involved some anonymous “he said/he said” articles, and a whole bunch of backtracking by Yankee officials. While everyone seems to be on the same page right now, I believe Joe Girardi’s job security may have suffered because of it.

The story took off when Girardi originally penciled A-Rod into the lineup on Friday but announced shortly before the game started that Alex would be getting two days off instead. Some papers reported it as a benching due to his poor play while most news outlets recognized that a player coming off a serious labrum procedure shouldn’t be playing 38 games in a row. It was a rest, but from where did the demand for rest come from?

Over the last few days, the story has continued to swirl. Linda Robertson reported rather skeptically that the decision to rest A-Rod was mutual, but she also noted that some have alleged a behind-closed-doors fight between A-Rod and Girardi. The Big Lead’s Miami sources echo Robertson’s piece. “Why didn’t you sit me against the Nationals?” A-Rod is rumored to have asked.

In the New York papers, Brian Cashman has denied ordering a benching, and Girardi says he didn’t want to do it. Rather, A-Rod sat to rest his fatigued lower body. There is no doubt that the team is better off with a well-rested A-Rod, but that’s almost beside the point.

Meanwhile, the CC Sabathia saga adds a new dimension to this sordid story of injury management. In expressing his belief that he would start this weekend against the Mets, Sabathia fielded a question concerning the cause of his injury. What led to this soreness, reporters wanted to know. “It could be the 120 pitches this year,” Sabathia said.

By blaming the pitch count totals, Sabathia is indirectly implicating Joe Girardi. The big lefty has thrown 119 pitches or more three times this season, most recently on June 11 when he went 123 pitches. Last year, he threw four starts of 120 pitches or more. All of them came after July 2. Is Sabathia saying that Girardi has not managed his arm well enough? Reading between the lines, I certainly think so.

Meanwhile, in The Record today, Bob Klapisch calls the next stretch of games a “critical phase of [Girardi's] managerial career.” While Klapisch cites using Mariano Rivera in the 8th against the Mets — a move I will always support — he also questions whether Girardi is under a microscope for the way he drives his players.

Maybe this second-guessing in the media is a big nothing, but maybe the Yankees’ Front Office is putting some of these stories out there. Are they questioning Girardi? Is he on the hot seat — or at least in the on-deck circle for the hot seat? He doesn’t deserve this treatment, but someone in the Front Office doesn’t seem too happy with Girardi. If this year doesn’t end in Yankee-defined success, I wonder what his managerial future will be.

The mold for a good manager is cut from many a cloth. For 12 seasons starting sixty years ago, the Yankees had a cantankerous old man at their helm. For 12 seasons starting in 1996, they had a master of calm leading the charge. In between, they had strategic geniuses, feisty former players, the calm wisdom of Yogi Berra and everyone in between heading the team.

This year, we have seen Joe Girardi grow into the mold. A few weeks ago, as the Yankees were struggling their way out of April, it seemed as though Girardi was on the hot seat. Now that the Yanks have gone 15-5 over their last 20 and find themselves in first place by themselves, everyone loves Joe.

Take, for example, this George A. King III column. Since King is relying on quotes and stories from the Yankees themselves, we can’t go too wrong with it. In it, he talks to Mark Teixeira about playing for Girardi. The Yanks’ first baseman seemingly loves Girardi.

“The good thing about Joe is that he is consistent. He expects a lot out of us but you look at him and you can’t tell if we won or lost,” Teixeira said. “Your leader needs to show confidence. The manager can’t be upset after every loss. He can’t be angry all the time.”

Later on, Teixeira added a bit of hyperbole. “Out of all the managers I have had, he is the best I have had by far,” he said to King.

Now, that’s high praise considering how Teixeira’s last two managers were Mike Scioscia and Bobby Cox, both highly respected in their own rights. Of course, Teixeira could just be saying what anyone would say of his or her employer. Of course, I love my boss! Who doesn’t?

In a way though, what Teixeira says about Girardi is something we Yankee fans saw in Joe Torre for 12 seasons. The Yankees would win, and the Yankees would lose. They would top all of baseball three years running, and lose in the first round of the playoffs three years running. When they would lose, though, Torre remained mostly unflappable. Some criticized it, but the players responded well to his stoicism.

The job in the Bronx isn’t Girardi’s first. He had a tumultuous one-year term in Miami heading the Marlins. However, he earned his stripes, so to speak, while serving as Torre’s bench coach, and perhaps he’s finding his way now as a similar type of manager.

In the end, it’s never easy to discern how much credit a manager deserves for a team’s success. Clearly, Joe Girardi’s team isn’t perfect. After all, he couldn’t trust another reliever last night and used Al Aceves to relieve Andy Pettitte in the 6th and then serve as the bridge and set-up man to Mariano Rivera. That’s not Girardi’s fault though; he plays the cards that are dealt to him.

When the dust settles in October, we’ll have a better sense of how Girardi handles a team with the potential go all the way. Right now, as the Yanks sit in first place at the end of May he looks good. Let’s see where the chips fall in four or five months.

Last night’s loss to Tampa Bay marked Joe Girardi’s 189th game as the Yankee skipper. Since replacing Joe Torre, Girardi has gone 102-87, good for a .540 winning percentage. For Yankee standards, that’s not exactly a stellar start.

As this is New York and as Yankee fans are known to be fickle, as the Red Sox’s Tuesday night victory over the Yanks reached its conclusion, the few remaining fans in Yankee Stadium took up a chant. “We want Torre,” they yelled as Joe Girardi walked to the mound to remove an ineffective Mark Melancon from the hill.

It is, of course, the logical response for many fans. The Yankees find themselves under .500 on the season. They’ve managed to lose games by getting shelled and by failing to come through in the clutch. They’ve found no success out of the pen and are 0-5 against Boston. In another era, Joe Girardi would be out of the job for, as David Pinto noted, failing to deliver the goods.

For a real perspective on this issue, though, the man with the green tea had the smartest statement. The L.A. Times asked Joe Torre his take on the situation in New York, and Joe had a perfectly rational and calming answer. No wonder the fans on Tuesday wanted him back.

“Those fans are impatient. I enjoyed the 12 years. They weren’t always happy with me,” He said. “I feel for Joe because this kid’s a good manager and he’s going to be a better manager. We’re still talking about the first month of the season. There’s so much baseball to play. There’s a lot of talent on that club and they’re going to win their share of games.”

It does not look good in New York right now. The Yankees are 5.5 games out of first place after just 27 games of the season, and they are setting themselves up for yet another mid-season comeback. But the Yankees are playing now without their starting third baseman, their starting catcher and their Opening Day right fielder. The team’s setup man is out indefinitely with an elbow problem, and the number two starter is trying to build up strength in his legs. Guys on the roster who have no business being here — Angel Berroa, Francisco Cervelli — have been pressed into action, and that just isn’t Joe Girardi’s fault.

In one day, the Joe Girardi Job Watch can begin in earnest. When A-Rod returns, a big missing piece of the 2009 puzzle will be in place, and as much of a headache that A-Rod can be, he makes the rest of the team better. The bullpen is still an issue, and Brett Tomko certainly isn’t the answer. With A-Rod around, though, the Yanks should put their mediocre play behind them. If they’re still under .500 come June 7, then we can talk about Girardi’s job.