Aaron Boone’s inability to put Game 1 behind Yankees should end managerial tenure

Listening to the postgame comments Monday from Yankees manager Aaron Boone, paired with the analysis from commentators like YES Network’s Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill and WFAN’s Suzyn Waldman and Justin Shackil, a recurring theme kept coming up: they’ve been playing behind since the Game 1 walk-off loss and they haven’t been able to move on from that.

Boone hasn’t been able to get the team back on track after mismanaging Game 1, taking out ace Gerrit Cole after 88 pitches, and bringing in Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in five weeks, to face Freddie Freeman with the Yankees up 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th inning. That choice was made instead of flagging down reliever Tim Hill, who hasn’t allowed a run in 4 2/3 innings of work this postseason.

Since Freeman’s grand slam gut punch in the 10th last Friday, they haven’t recovered. But the counterfactual there is that Boone hasn’t been able to get his players to put that loss behind them. That inability to manage the team in a way that helps his players have short memories should be a fireable offense. He hasn't been able to prepare them like it never happened; it hangs over the team like a Fat Joe fart.

David Ortiz noted the malaise on FOX when he asked, “Are we in a funeral already?” The body language has not been good… from both the players and fans alike. At least with the players, that’s on Boone. He hasn’t had them ready to go in Games 2 and 3, leading -- essentially -- their demise.

Obviously it doesn’t help when your best player and Captain is the only qualified outfielder in the World Series without a run or an RBI through the first three games. Aaron Judge is the likely AL MVP winner, but he went 0-for-3 with a strikeout on Monday, raising him to 0-for-10 in the first inning with runners on base this postseason (with seven strikeouts). As Boone said postgame, "Hopefully get on time and connect on some.”

Hope is not a World Series strategy for the New York Yankees

“Hopefully”? Your best player has been a no-show, and he’s not going anywhere after this season. And the beat went on: it was “a perfect throw” from Teoscar Hernández that nailed Giancarlo Stanton at home in the bottom of the fourth to take them out of the inning. In his postgame interview, Boone noted the obvious: “When we’ve had opportunities, we haven’t cashed in.”

Boone had previously stated that Dodgers starters Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler “did a good job of taking a lead and really attacking and getting ahead.” But it turns out that his hitters just watched 24 fastballs go by for called strikes on Monday, the most they’ve stared at in a game this season. That’s on the analytics used by Boone in game planning and offensive strategy.

And again he offered hopium after the game: "Hopefully we can go be this amazing story and shock the world... but we have to grab one first.”

Since he was hired to manage the team ahead of the 2018 season, Boone has 603 wins and a .584 winning percentage in the regular season. That sounds solid, but it trails Hall of Fame Yankees managers Joe McCarthy (.627, seven World Series titles), Casey Stengel (.623, seven World Series titles), Joe Torre (.605, four World Series titles) and Miller Huggins (.597, three World Series titles), as well as Billy Martin’s .591 and the 1977 World Series championship.

Unlike all of them, Boone looks like he’s headed to zero championships either as a Yankees player (in 2003) or as manager since 2018, with a postseason managerial record of 21-22 (.488) entering Game 4. Also, unlike the Padres, who pushed the Dodgers to a Game 5 in the NLCS and scored 21 runs in that series, or the Mets, who scored 26 runs and won two games against LA in the NLCS, the Yankees haven’t been able to muster up much of anything, only scoring seven runs in the first three doomed games.

As Anthony Castrovince of MLB wrote, “How’d the Dodgers win this one? Well, they hit better, pitched better, ran the bases better and caught the ball better.”

Given teams taking a 3-0 lead have gone on to win all best-of-seven game series 39 out of 40 times (98%), including 31 sweeps, and the smart money isn’t betting on the Yankees pulling off a comeback here. David Ortiz can joke, “Don’t worry, you can come back from three, I’ve done it”, in reference to the 2004 ALCS when the Red Sox came back from three down to beat the Yankees. But this series is, for all intents and purposes, over.

And let’s all remember, Joe Girardi - who managed the Yankees to their last World Series championship in 2009 - was fired as manager after the Yankees missed the 2017 World Series by one game by this same general manager Brian Cashman.

As Yanks Go Yard co-editor Thomas Carannante wrote before Game 3, “A loss on Monday should seal Boone's fate if he doesn't make any changes or if his instincts prove to be wrong yet again.” It’s time to end his managerial tenure after six years of being out managed in the postseason. Paging Hal Steinbrenner. Are you paying attention? If your dad was in charge, we’d be calling Judge “Mr. May”, and Cashman and Boone would both be gone.