The fall and fall of Jason Giambi

ESPN (and various other sources) are reporting that Jason Giambi met with Brian Cashman and Joe Torre today to discuss his poor start to the season, where the subject of Giambi's willingness to take trip to the minor leagues was discussed.

Given Giambi's later interview, it seems that Jason told the team that he wasn't willing to consider such a move... at this time. However, ESPN continues to speculate that the Yankees may make a move to either release Giambi, and take the $80M or so hit that would result, or 'persuade' him to go through the waiver process to get him down to the minors - perhaps as soon as the end of this week when Sierra appears likely to come off the DL.

Giambi is hitting an anemic .195, but continues to get on base at a .386 clip - though even this is 25 points below his fantastic career .411 pace. While the Yankees did not award Giambi the contract that they did just so he could avoid making outs, they did award that contract, and need to live with it. If they do eat this contract, this is the real sign of all that is wrong with baseball - not that the Yankees can award such contracts in the first place, but that they can make that expensive a mistake, and exit it without real pain.

If they are committed to helping Giambi, would it not make sense to put him up the lineup, rather than try to hide him in the 8/9 spot? If they hit him 2nd, he would more likely see good pitching to hit, and could act as a table setter ahead of the current big hitters in the Bombers lineup?