For manager Aaron Boone, it may be now or never with Yankees
New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone looks on from the dugout before an MLB baseball game against the Oakland Athletics at Yankee Stadium on Monday, May 8, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
HOUSTON — How poetic that manager Aaron Boone, shouldering an October mandate as he enters the final year of his Yankees contract, will begin this pivotal season Thursday where too many have ended that very same month.
It’s fair to say that no one in the visitors dugout at Minute Maid Park, where the bogeyman Astros await on Opening Day, faces a Boone-level degree of pressure, for the simple reason that players don’t get fired. The manager serves at the discretion of the front office, and sometimes, depending on feedback from the paying customers, even the owner’s suite can potentially be swayed by which way the wind is blowing in the Bronx.
This very much remains a volatile time to be wearing pinstripes, and come Thursday at 4:10 p.m., when the Astros’ Framber Valdez fires that first pitch to Gleyber Torres, we’ll have reached the official expiration date on the winter’s make-good promises. Boone’s “hellbent” proclamations served their purpose in February, but he only gets the benefit of the doubt until the games count.
“I’m here to try and win a World Series,” Boone said Wednesday during a Zoom call with reporters. “All my energy and all my focus is trying to play my part in helping us be the best possible team we can be. And our goal is to be a world champion.”
For the record, Boone ranks sixth in winning percentage (.585) on the Yankees’ all-time list among managers with 800 or more games, just below Billy Martin (.591) and ahead of his predecessor, Joe Girardi (.562). Of those top five, Martin is the only one not in the Hall of Fame. With the exception of Martin's lone title, each of them have multiple championships to their credit.
Boone, now in his seventh year, has yet to take the Yankees to a single World Series appearance, never mind win a title. And for a franchise supposedly judged on this one specific goal, above all else, it becomes an increasingly difficult detail to overlook.
That’s not to say this October famine is all Boone’s fault. Baseball has changed dramatically since Joe Torre’s dynastic run, and the Yankees’ financial might doesn’t carry the clout it once did in helping Girardi claim their last crown in ’09. Rather than October being a Yankees’ birthright, they concede that the playoffs are a crapshoot now, the World Series available to anyone who squeezes in, like a March Madness Cinderella.
But the Yankees can’t play that card this season, and Boone doesn’t have that luxury either, not after narrowly finishing above .500 (82-80) a year ago. In most decades, a Yankees manager wouldn’t have survived that, despite Boone having a roster decimated by injuries, chief among them losing MVP Aaron Judge for seven weeks to a freakish toe mishap with the Dodger Stadium wall. It’s unrealistic to think that Torre or Miller Huggins would have got those banged-up Yankees any further than Boone did, all things considered.
Now that we’re at Opening Day, however, the Yankees are in the process of reaching critical mass. They’ve spent the winter raising the stakes as an organization, from the October summit in Tampa to the blockbuster trade for Juan Soto to Hal Steinbrenner’s numerous mea culpas, and failing to deliver on their “all-in” pledge is not an option.
Boone certainly understands he’s in the crosshairs, but he’s also not the type that spends a ton of bandwidth on the negative. On paper, the Yankees are hardly a perfect team, relying on a wrecking-ball lineup to carry a suspect rotation that won’t have ace Gerrit Cole for the first two months (and that’s the best-case scenario).
That could be enough to keep the Yankees chugging along on a playoff pace. Or it might sabotage them early as they await Cole’s return to stabilize the staff. Either way, Boone’s status will be a persistent topic of conversation, just like every manager on the clock with a contract ticking down. Boone insists that won’t be on his mind.
“I’m in competition mode,” Boone said.
Despite the October shortfalls, Boone’s strengths are evident to anyone around him on a daily basis. He’s well-liked and respected in the clubhouse — being a former player of pedigree doesn’t hurt — along with having a smooth collaborative relationship with the shot-callers upstairs. GM Brian Cashman has remained a staunch supporter of Boone throughout and Judge’s growing voice on front-office matters, as mentioned by Steinbrenner himself, is a big plus for this manager, too.
Frankly, it’s hard to quantify a manager’s impact, other than recognizing a bad job when you see it. But Boone checks a lot of boxes for these Yankees, and now it’s up to them to provide that validation. Boone wasn’t the one responsible for upgrading the roster over the winter, or deciding how much money to spend, but how this team performs will ultimately decide his fate, fair or not. That’s just how the manager’s gig works.
“I do feel like there was an extra edge to our preparation,” Boone said. “And even as we go through our advance meetings (for the Astros series) as groups, there’s an edge and a focus and a commitment that is where I think it needs to be.”
Opening Day marks the end of that speculation. And the start of another chance for Boone to get the Yankees where they desperately need to finish.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
