What's up with Hal Steinbrenner's magical mystery tour?

So I see that Hal Steinbrenner made the media rounds yesterday, telling reporters and sports yakkers gems like "I think Brian [Cashman] did a great job" as general manager. (What high standards, eh? If Cashman did a great job this year, then I would hate to think what Hal considers a bad job?) I wonder what took Hal so long to finally speak out about the season. After all, it ended 10 days ago. (And it ended pretty much exactly like I predicted in March -- I said the team would not finish higher than third place, or win more than 86 games, and that is virtually what happened.)

 After all, Mariano Rivera tributes aside, this season was a debacle. And Hal, while giving lip service to the team's goals about a championship, sounded pretty blase about the whole thing. He seems to think that if you clap your hands and believe in fairies, that is enough. He told Joel Sherman this about the quotes about his father posted around Yankeeland:

“My favorite is Churchill who said: A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity and an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty,” Hal said, leaning forward for the kind of emphasis that would make his old man proud. “My job is to be an optimist.”

Hal, here are a few other Winston Churchill quotes you ought to pay attention to:

“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

"It's time for Brian Cashman, Randy Levine, and Lonn Trost to go." (Okay, Churchill didn't really say that, but I bet he would have if he were still alive!)

Anyhow, the whole reason, it seems to me, for Steinbrenner's magical mystery tour yesterday is to put pressure on Joe Girardi to re-up as manager ASAP. I think Joe has less than a 50-50 chance of returning, though -- that's what I said on Facebook on the final game of the year.

The Yanks want him to re-sign without hearing what other teams have to say, though -- they have refused to give him permission to talk to other teams. I have to agree with Wally Matthews of ESPN in wondering what the Yanks are afraid of here. Matthews writes:

If it's fair for them to ask Girardi to make up his mind before the end of the month, then it is fair to grant him permission to talk to whoever else might be interested in him. That is what constitutes a good-faith negotiation. And you would think that the New York Yankees, who drink from the richest font of sports revenue in the world, would have nothing to fear from going up against smaller-market clubs like the Cubs and Nationals. 

Run, Joe, run! Away from this team. The Yanks are going nowhere next year.