Red Sox manager Alex Cora says Aaron Boone has done an 'amazing job' for Yankees this season

BOSTON – Aaron Boone, whose popularity among Yankees fans this year has fluctuated commensurate with his club’s day-to-day performance, had an unabashed fan in the opposing team dugout for Tuesday night’s American League wild-card game at Fenway Park.

"They have a great team, they did an amazing job," Alex Cora said Monday. "I think Aaron throughout the season with all the criticism, for him to be in this spot, tells you what kind of manager he is, what kind of person he is."

Cora’s Red Sox and Boone’s Yankees finished at an identical 92-70 this season, with Boston’s 10-9 edge in the season series the reason Tuesday’s game was at Fenway Park and not Yankee Stadium.

Tuesday’s winner moves on to face the top-seeded Rays Thursday night in St. Petersburg, Florida, in Game 1 of the American League Division Series.

Boone and Cora are friends from their overlapping time at ESPN as baseball analysts and they’ve remained friends even when the heat of this ancient rivalry has ratcheted up, such as in 2018 when Yankees third-base coach Phil Nevin got into it with Cora during an April game at Fenway.

The clubs faced off in the 2018 ALDS, with the Red Sox prevailing, three-games-to-one, in the best-of-five.

"I talked to him yesterday [Sunday]," Cora said. "I'm very proud of him. At one point we went there [just after the All-Star break] it was very tough for him. I know how it works. We work in two markets that people will talk about your team and they will talk about you. Although I try to cancel the noise here, I check on my guys around the league. At one point, it was very difficult over there. Although tomorrow, at 8 o’clock, he wants to beat me as bad as I want to beat him, and at the end, we'll see who advances. But I think he did an amazing job this year."

Yankees fans, as mentioned, vacillate almost daily on Boone, depending on that day’s result.

Boone, hired after Joe Girardi was non-renewed following a seven-game loss to the Astros in the 2017 ALCS, will see his contract expire whenever the Yankees’ season is done. Though managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner behind the scenes at times during this up-and-down year has expressed disappointment in how things have gone, there’s no indication that displeasure has been directed at Boone.

Win or lose Tuesday night, the safe way to bet would be the Yankees retaining Boone, essentially Cashman’s hand-picked manager, a move Steinbrenner enthusiastically endorsed. The discontent percolating inside the organization in recent years has had far more to do with an analytics department that club insiders say have the final say on just about all decisions and often rub those in uniform, players and coaches, the wrong way.

Regardless, while speculation on Boone’s job has been a topic since the Yankees lurched from the gate 5-10 and were treading water at 41-41, the fourth-year manager isn’t sweating it.

"This is my livelihood. This has been a huge part of my life. I love it. Means a lot to me," he said Monday. "But in the end, it's not everything."

Boone has said from Day 1 one of his goals was, if a visitor came into his clubhouse, he or she would not know whether the Yankees were on a long winning streak or long losing streak.

Mission accomplished, players say, and have said since 2018.

"It's always important for a manager to keep a level head, especially during down times, because we know during the times we've not played so well, that's not who we are," said catcher Kyle Higashioka, who started, as he almost always does with Gerrit Cole on the mound, Tuesday night. "So it's important not to get down on ourselves, and we know that he's always going to have a pretty calm, level head about everything. It never helps when you panic about something. I think that kind of negative mindset can only negatively impact you. It's always great to have somebody leading the team with a very level head."

For Boone, a product of a baseball family, that’s just common sense.

"It's a 162-game season. It's a grind. It's a game of failure," Boone said Monday. "Unlike other sports, the best [baseball] teams win 60 percent of the time, and you've got to be able to deal with that. And you see teams, you see players, you see talented players, that can't handle that go by the wayside. So there's a makeup quality there that I think you have to have as a club if you're going to survive the inevitable grind of the major league season."

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.