The New York Yankees will never win a World Series with Aaron Boone as manager. We know it to be a fact, a truism comparable to the blue skies and the sun rising each morning and the worst people on earth rushing down the aisle immediately after a plane lands. Over the past nine years, Boone has led the Yankees to regular season records. For nine years, he has completely embarrassed himself in the playoffs. We have no more questions. We have seen enough.
The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Yankees 4-3 on Wednesday, completing a three-game sweep in the AL Division Series. New York did not lead for a single moment the entire series. The Yankees were held to one hit in Game 1, committed four errors in Game 2 and pinned their Game 3 hopes on a fan who nearly woke the ghost of Jeffrey Maier. Ben Rice looked like the best hitter on the planet, Cam Schlittler battled, and Anthony Volpe won back a large portion of the fan base. Other than that, everything was more or less a disaster.
“We need to be more complete offensively, defensively and pitching,” Boone told reporters after the Yankees were eliminated. “We did some really good things this year, but ultimately not enough to beat a really good Rays team.”
The fault for this loss does not lie solely with Boone. He is not responsible for the fact that Ryan McMahon botched a routine ground ball to third base, nor for the fact that Jazz Chisholm Jr. threw the ball about 12 miles wide of first base while trying to turn a double play. Boone is not responsible for the fact that Max Fried gave up a heartbreaking home run to Victor Mesa Jr., or that Austin Wells made a basic error so egregious that it caused every Yankees fan to make a Looney Tunes-esque spitting takes the moment it comes second. And that’s not to mention the most obvious excuse Boone has: New York was without its best player, Aaron Judge, who missed most of the season with a fractured rib and has been out since Sept. 16 while recovering from a calf injury.
But all these micro-failures shouldn’t distract from the bigger picture. The Yankees came face to face again in the postseason, just like they always do in the postseason. The details change, but the storyline remains the same.
The Yankees now head into an offseason facing a very familiar set of questions. They can view their latest playoff flop as a crapshoot. Or they can finally admit that their organizational philosophy is crap.
Aaron Boone gestures toward the bullpen in the eighth inning of Game 3
Boone holds the MLB record for most successful playoff games without winning a World Series. Do you know how scandalous this statistic is? Baseball has been around for a long time, and over the years many people simply haven’t been able to overcome this obstacle. But no one was ever as good as Boone at being just good enough to lose. In this respect, he is alone.
Boone’s postseason failures are even more damning when you broaden the scope. There are only 13 MLB managers who have worked at least a decade straight with a franchise without winning a World Series. Four completed their terms before 1950; two (Terry Francona and Lou Piniella) had won championships with other teams before being hired in those positions. And one member of that group is Kevin Cash, the Rays manager who could very well come off this list in the coming weeks. It’s one thing to give managers a grace period. It’s another to treat their positions like Supreme Court appointments. In what other aspect of society are we becoming more patient, not less?
There are two management archetypes that tend to be successful in modern baseball. The first is tactical genius. Managers who have an innate sense of the game and who instinctively press the right buttons in the biggest moments. The second is the culture builder. Managers who foster a clubhouse atmosphere that can withstand anything, who exude resilience and whose teams constantly fight.
Boone is neither. His tactical shortcomings have their own story: Severino against the Red Sox. Ottavino versus Springer. The Deivi Garcia bet. Nestor in game 2.
But the Yankees culture under Boone is even worse. Boone may not be responsible for the specific mistakes the Yankees made in the ALDS postseason, but he is responsible for his teams making the same types of mistakes year after year. When the first-inning debacle was unfolding in Game 2 against the Rays — New York committed three errors in four at-bats — the entire baseball world was making jokes about the fifth inning of Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. It’s not just that we’ve seen this movie before. This is the only film Boone ever released.
Part of the reason Boone has held on to his job thus far is that he unconditionally follows the plan that general manager Brian Cashman and the front office want him to execute. It will read anything you put on that teleprompter, even if Trent Grisham is in the lead. He does exactly what he is told.
But at some point, absolute loyalty may not be enough. Results must count. Failure must count. That the Yankees have only one World Series since 2000 has to matter. At least, that’s what you might think.
For some, the Boone conversation became a litmus test for the power of analysis. The numbers indicate that replacing McMahon with Volpe is a good idea. It wasn’t on Boone that it wasn’t like that. By this logic, you either understand how baseball works, or you base your analysis solely on vibrations. In scientific terms: are you a stock market boyfriend or an astrologer girlfriend?
But this is a false dichotomy. The Yankees’ strategy isn’t working, but that’s not a fatal flaw in itself. Good leadership is not just about vision. It’s also a question of adaptation. The part of the Boone experience that has always been most infuriating is that when his plan goes awry, he doesn’t know how to adapt. This has cost the Yankees dearly on several occasions, in ways big and small.
The most representative part of Game 3 took place at the bottom of the eighth inning. Boone hit Paul Goldschmidt for Luis Garcia Jr. due to their splits against lefties, and Goldschmidt reached first on an error to start the inning. New York trailed by one point, and it was one of its last chances to tie. Goldschmidt, 39, is one of the slowest players in the majors, so it seemed like a no-brainer to insert a pinch runner.
Paul Goldschmidt hits a single against the Tampa Bay Rays in the eighth inning of Game 3
Boone had already burned Chisholm as a pinch hitter for Jose Caballero the previous inning, so he didn’t have a speedster waiting in the wings. But instead of accepting that, finding a plan B and bringing in someone with league-average speed like Heliot Ramos to run the bases, he let Goldschmidt stay in the game. Two batters later, rookie shortstop George Lombard Jr. hit a power out that would have been an infield single if the runner on first had been a half-step faster. Instead of having men on first and second with one out, the Yankees had a man on first with two outs. One round later, their season was over.
It will soon be decided whether this will be Boone’s last memory of New York. Maybe this really will be the end, partly because we’re approaching year 10 and partly because there has been some recent tension between Boone and Judge. If the coach has lost the support of his best player, that means a lot.
Either way, we know enough to know: it’s not going to happen, not next year or ever. The Yankees’ vision isn’t working. We’ll see if they’re finally ready to accept it and move on.
Gn sports
