With Opening Day upon them, Yankees get to find out how good this offense can be

HOUSTON — Aaron Boone, still “hellbent” on winning a title.

The Yankees manager, entering his seventh year and in the final year of his contract, used that word as part of the most memorable phrase from a mostly forgettable spring training kickoff news conference in Tampa on Feb. 14.

Coaches and managers will occasionally send messages to their team through the media. St. John’s coach Rick Pitino locally was among the latest to do so back in February.

Boone has done so before in his tenure. He slammed a table in the Yankee Stadium news conference room during a postgame media gathering in 2022 as his team fell to 4-14 that August after a loss to the Blue Jays. That could be cited as an example.

But, in a wide-ranging interview with Newsday midway through spring training, Boone said the comment, which got a lot of play publicly, wasn’t calculated.

“That was just an off-the-cuff line,” Boone said. “There’s times when you know there’s a significant subject brewing, whether it’s around a particular player that may be out, so you try to be a little more prepared in how I want to answer something. But that wasn’t one of those . . . I think it’s fitting. That was in the moment how I felt, and I feel like a lot of our people in this room feel that way.”

About a month-and-a-half after his “hellbent on being a champion” comment, Boone’s team officially starts that process Thursday afternoon at Minute Maid Park against the Astros, a thorn-in-the-side like no other for the franchise the last decade.

Because of the elbow injury suffered by Gerrit Cole in Florida, one that will keep him sidelined for at least the first two months of the season, Nestor Cortes gets the Opening Day nod, opposed by Houston lefthander Framber Valdez.

“It’s a time of tremendous hope, and that’s what we have right now,” Boone said late Wednesday afternoon in a Zoom news conference shortly before the Yankees worked out at Minute Maid. “I feel like we’ve done what we needed to do in the spring to be ready. Obviously, a couple of key guys with Gerrit missing the start and DJ [LeMahieu] for however long, you never want that. But I do feel like otherwise we’re ready to roll.”

LeMahieu suffered a bone bruise on his right foot after hitting a foul ball off it March 16 and the Yankees, who even before that had been exploring the trade market for an upgrade in the utility infield department, suddenly felt, in Boone’s words, more “urgency” to do so. They executed a trade Wednesday for the Marlins’ Jon Berti. It was part of a three-team trade that sent catcher Ben Rortvedt to the Rays, who dating to December had been trying to pry him away from the Yankees, and Yankees outfield prospect John Cruz going to Miami.

Their roster finally set — barring any more last-minute moves — the Yankees head into the season trying to put last year’s 82-80 nightmare behind. The schedule-makers did them no favors as the four-game set against the Astros, a team that knocked the Yankees out of the postseason in the 2015 AL wild-card game and then handed them losses in the 2017, 2019 and 2022 ALCS, is followed by three games at the defending NL champion Diamondbacks.

“When you're up against a good team like Houston to start it off, you’ve got to be ready to go. You’ve got to be on your toes,” Aaron Judge said. “Everybody in this room realizes that and we’re going to show up and do our thing.”

The offense, in large part because of the toe injury Judge suffered last June, did not do that in 2023. The Yankees went about changing the equation in the offseason with the addition of superstar Juan Soto, one of the game’s most feared bats, and the underrated Alex Verdugo. With the injury to Cole and the uncertainty surrounding the rest of the rotation — except Marcus Stroman, who has been a consistently good pitcher in his nine-year career — the offense may well have to carry the club in the early going.

And maybe all year.

“We’re coming off a season where we really struggled offensively and I feel like, as we sit here now, we have a chance to be a really good offensive group,” Boone said. “That’s the expectation . . . tomorrow we get to go find out how good we think we are.”

If they’re not, surely there will be, well, hell to pay.