Yankees Aaron Boone deserves AL Manager of the Year Award

The Yankees need eight wins in their final 21 regular-season games to achieve consecutive 100-win seasons — and like it or not, manager Aaron Boone should be the frontrunner for AL Manager of the Year honors.

As the Yankees set to begin a four-game series against the Red Sox, their AL East lead stands at 9.5 games over the Rays. The Yanks’ 92-49 record (.652 winning percentage) is the best in baseball, and would currently earn them home-field advantage for the duration of the upcoming postseason.

With a magic number of 12, the Bombers have defied the odds this season, when you consider they have sent 29 players to the injured list.

Three critical players that have missed the entire season thus far include staff ace Luis Severino, four-time All-Star set-up man, Dellin Betances, and reigning home run leader Giancarlo Stanton (I’m not even going to count the nine games he was active for.)

Naturally, when you’re an organization that has the third-highest payroll in baseball on Opening Day ($207 million), you’re expected to compete for the playoffs (at the very least).

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But that was before Miguel Andujar went down with a partially torn labrum knocking him out for the season, Greg Bird disappeared after another foot injury and Troy Tulowitzki up and retired.

Even more recently, the Yanks have been without the services of Aaron Hicks, who after a breakout 2018 campaign, has been limited to 59 games due to a series of back, oblique and elbow issues.

Therefore, Aaron Boone’s mantra of “next man up” has been on full display as journeymen like Mike Tauchman, Gio Urshela and Mike Ford have excelled in their new roles as everyday players.

However, now that Luke Voit and Edwin Encarnacion have returned after missing time with a sports hernia and broken wrist, respectively, Ford’s place on the postseason roster remains to be seen.

While I fully understand that rookie skipper Rocco Baldelli of the Twins, Bob Melvin of the A’s and the Rays’ Kevin Cash are each battling it out for playoff spots with far lesser paid players, not one of these men has filled out a lineup card with anywhere near the amount of pressure to win as Boone has.

It’s easy to consider last year’s MOTY, A.J. Hinch, as Boone’s main rival, but no manager in AL history has ever won the award in consecutive seasons. Bobby Cox is the only manager to ever done so — 2004 & 2005 with Atlanta.

In a season where even critics of the Yankees could give them a pass, should they have struggled to put a competitive team on the field, especially when you consider the massive inconsistencies delivered by the starting rotation, Boone has defied the odds to prove that the whole is greater than the sum of its part’s.

Because of C.C. Sabathia’s problematic knee and the absence of a fifth starter, Boone has used “the opener,” mostly Chad Green, in a most successful way. In 13 “starts,” Green’s only had one poor go of it, against the Indians, when he allowed five runs in a third of an inning.

If you take that bad outing of the equation, Green has a 1.59 ERA in 17 innings, and 10 consecutive frames without allowing a run.

With Boone’s mixture of analytics and being a players manager, he’s been able to rally the troops no matter the situation — as his now infamous savages in the box rant and subsequent support would attest.

Boone is a testament to a clubhouse that genuinely gets along and a roster of flexibility, all the while correcting his 2018 shortcomings in bullpen management.

He’s guided a mixture of players — veteran, unproven and budding superstars — and withstood the constant barrage of injuries that zapped his team of everyone from Aaron Judge to James Paxton for a period of time.

Boone should also be given credit for setting up AL MVP candidates D.J. LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres for success. Even Gary Sanchez in on pace to hit 40 home runs, despite playing in only 99 games.

Sure, some will say Boone is merely representative of the talent around him, or that he’s Brian Cashman’s puppet. And of course, New York bias may stop some baseball writers from voting for Boone when award season rolls around.

But when you look at the team he’s led as a whole, with 21 games remaining — if the Yankees finish with baseball’s best record, there’s no doubt he should be named the American League Manager of the Year. In 141 games, the Yankees have used 121 different lineups. Enough said.