But ultimately here’s the problem for the Yankees: Max Fried has been bad for like two months and Aaron Judge is a ~.800 OPS DH-only bat since his elbow injury, and if those things are true, there ain’t a manager in MLB history that’s getting that team out of the first round of the playoffs.
They lost Cole...they're playing a terrible SS, and they're not a great defensive team. Doesn't matter if they can hit 5 dingers a game but when they can't it's ugly
Hard to disagree with that.
I guess my response to this is that Boone has been deficient for his entire tenure as manager, it's not like this season is a weird outlier.
I just don’t really agree with the first part, I think he’s fine and does some bad things and some good things and doesn’t really change the baseline of the team (like nearly every manager ever)
Ultimately, I think the stuff we see matters less than the stuff we don’t see, and I have a hard time making a case that the Yankees have generally underperformed their talent level under him (unless you think he’s the reason Volpe and Dominguez sucks, I guess)
How do you know young guys are underperforming, and it’s not the case that they’re not very good ballplayers? There’s no baseline of stats. The prospects are hyped endlessly, but other than Judge, there’s been no one great in 20-25 years.
I'm not just talking about prospects!
My bad. I saw Volpe and Dominguez. But yeah, it’s pretty awful roster.
I think it's a roster (and has been for most of Boone's tenure) assembled in such a way as to accentuate all of his tactical and strategic deficiencies.
That’s not the simplest explanation, but ok.
Oh they've added plenty of bad players on top of that, to be clear.
The team has been atrocious at routine plays for years, even with different rosters, and the buck for that type of coaching failure has to stop somewhere. (I don't think firing Boone fixes everything but I think he is actively bad at a lot of on-field stuff which matters a lot!)
I think it’s fine to say they need a new voice or something, but again, do you really think this team has dramatically underperformed its talent level in his time?
Maybe not dramatically, but yes. And I think the *ways* they underperform on a day-to-day basis are the type of thing a better manager would help ameliorate.
Also, to zoom out a bit, I think people focus on Boone as much as we do because: 1) Hal isn't selling 2) If they replaced Cashman, the incoming GM's priority list is going to be "Cut payroll" 8 times before "Win a WS" even gets a chance at showing up 3) (to be cont'd)
3) Three Yankees coaches who worked for Boone have become managers on other teams and are generally well-regarded!