This year’s ALDS sweep at the hands of the Rays felt like a culmination for the Aaron Boone era Yankees. I’m not sure it will actually be a culmination of his managerial tenure as I could definitely see the team keeping him, but those three games felt like everything that has gone wrong in a Yankees’ playoff exit from 2018 to now all rolled into one. There were mental mistakes, sloppy play, and bats going cold all at once.
I think it would be unfair to say that Boone hasn’t grown at all since taking
the job. Early in his tenure, I used to get frustrated by him sticking with a pitcher too long trying to steal an extra out or two. These days, it seems pretty rare that those instances happen. However, any growth from him is overshadowed by the frustration that I share with many other Yankee fans.
In watching this year’s playoff defeat, my mind couldn’t help but keep going over the things that went wrong that I could see coming, because all of Boone’s teams seem to suffer in these ways. Whether or not the Yankees do bring Aaron Boone back, I personally am out, and it would take a massive change of fortune to change that. Here are the reasons why.
For one, his teams seem to play with just no sense of fundamentals. I am an analytically-inclined fan, so when I say this, I don’t meant that they don’t bunt enough or that they need to learn to go the other way and hit singles, because I think there are logical reasons that make it easier said than done against the pitchers of today. However, there are some baseball things that happen in the heat of the moment of a game that don’t make sense no matter your way of thinking.
Austin Wells getting thrown out try to stretch a double into a triple in Game 1 of the ALDS is the perfect example. “Don’t make the last out of the inning at third base” is a longtime baseball axiom that makes perfect sense. With two outs, you can’t score on a sacrifice fly or any other kind of productive out, so those 90 feet matter way less than just having a chance with a runner in scoring position. Yet in the heat of the game, Wells seemingly wasn’t even thinking about that, never mind the fact that he ran through Luis Rojas’ stop sign too.
I feel like I regularly watch the Yankees allow opposing runners to take extra bases because a fielder tries for an out at home that has like a five percent chance at happening rather than throwing ahead of the runner, holding them, and living to fight for another day. Or, an infielder will try and make a rushed and/or spectacular throw to try and complete a double play leading to an error, and a runner getting an extra base (à la Jazz Chisholm Jr. in Game 2). I know it’s probably hard to think about these things in the moment and your instincts will kick in to some degree, but it feels like the Yankees regularly disadvantage themselves by going to the spectacular instead of sticking to basics.
Relatededly, I have another issue with the defense in general. Anthony Volpe went from winning a Gold Glove as a rookie to looking like a shortstop novice in just two seasons. It’s cost the Yankees some playoff games, including the infamous 2024 World Series Game 5 meltdown. Again, errors are something that are going to occur no matter what, but the Boone Yankees have been so sloppy so often.
That sloppiness also almost always comes to a head during an almost annual mid-season — usually around June or July — swoon.
Another baseball saying is that every team wins 50 and loses 50, and your season is decided by what you do in the rest of the games. For the most part, that holds true and I don’t think there’s any manager who could’ve snapped their fingers and won 110 games with any of Boone’s Yankees teams. Every team is going to slump. However, why is it that every Boone team will start off hot and then go through about a month where they appear to forget how to play baseball?
This year, they went 12-14 in June. If you expand that out to a couple days either side of the month, they had a 15-20 stretch. In 2025, they were under .500 in all of June and July. They were under .500 in July 2024, and that includes a five-game winning streak at the end of the month. They were on pace for 122 wins in mid-June 2022 and ended up winning under 100.
Again, I recognize that every team is going to have some slumps. The MLB-best Brewers were just barely over .500 after April and ended up with 103 wins. No team is going to put up exactly even .600 winning percentages every month — even the 1998 Yankees played a few ticks below that pace in September. However, I would appreciate if the Yankees stop having a stretch that obviously foreshadows what is going to happen that October.
Another issue that has played out in the postseason, but sometimes appears in the regular season as well is that the Boone Yankees’ teams never get the last laugh. I don’t mean this just in a “they haven’t won the World Series” sense, but they always seem to be the team that ends with with egg on their face.
In 2020, they got into it with the Rays after Aroldis Chapman airmailed a pitch over Mike Brosseau’s head, leading to a verbal back and forth between the two teams, on the field and in the media. What happens that October? The Yankees lose to the Rays after … Mike Brosseau homers off Aroldis Chapman.
In a 2021 Subway Series game, Francisco Lindor made allusions to what he perceived as the Yankees’ stealing signs. Giancarlo Stanton chirped him back after he hit a home run, leading to the benches clearing. However, what ended up deciding the game? Lindor’s third homer of the game.
The Yankees had a running rivalry with the Astros, partially inflamed by the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. However, Houston has won every postseason series. The 2018 Red Sox used the Yankees as motivation even after defeating them. The Dodgers’ Joe Kellykept chirping the Yankees after the 2024 World Series, even though he was bad enough that he wasn’t on LA’s roster that entire postseason.
Beyond just losing every postseason under Boone, the Yankees constantly end up the butt of jokes, and frankly I’m done with it.
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