Anthony Rizzo compliments Aaron Boone, Yankees after scorching take on playoff exit

It seems Anthony Rizzo may have followed his own advice after joining the Yankees locker room back in 2021 and taken a f***ing Xanax.

A few weeks after torching the Yankees' receding culture and Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s bizarre aversion to boos from his home crowd, Rizzo - who's been on the record with us before that he believes Aaron Boone's pregame prep is underrated - took to defending the Yanks' triumvirate of Boone, Hal Steinbrenner, and Brian Cashman for their post-mortem press conference.

"I thought Boonie did an amazing job at taking all the questions, taking all the heat," Rizzo said to co-host David Ross on their Ross and Rizzo Unfiltered podcast, the same origin point for his previous more critical comments. He also praised Boone for his (paraphrased) response to questions about his inability to beat higher-seeded teams in the postseason.

"Look, we haven't won, and until we do, we're going to work tirelessly to do that," Rizzo said, filling in Boone's thoughts.

Rizzo also credit both Steinbrenner and Cashman for putting all of their resources into "figuring out" the team's current inability to get over the hump. At face value, Rizzo picked out a series of accurate statements from the Yankees' brass and emphasized them. If you want to be a little bit less generous, though, he didn't take the negative view. Yes, the Yankees have pooled plenty of resources together to figure out how to overcome their current stumbling blocks. It hasn't worked. So maybe the personnel - and the man who chooses the personnel - is at fault.

Anthony Rizzo's praise for Aaron Boone's poise glosses over his strangest answer

Rizzo is mostly spot-on here, and anyone who characterizes the Yankees as not working tirelessly enough to solve their problems and/or being satisfied with a tarnished legacy is missing the mark. The one area where I'd push back is on his summation of Boone's response to the higher-seeded teams question.

"Hopefully we are that bully and we're the best team throughout the season next year and bully our way through the postseason. But until we don't I don't have that answer for you. We have to answer that," Boone responded to Joel Sherman when pressed.

The answer got to the heart of the matter. Great champions are just "teams that have never done it" until they actually do it. Sometimes, bullies arise from the ashes, missing that one special spark until the moment they find it. But he did say, "I don't have that answer for you," which Rizzo left out, and which is the premier clippable moment that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The press conference may not have been as bad as the virulent haters want you to believe it was, but Boone's response was less defiant than Rizzo made it out to be, and he sounded more lost for words than the summation indicated.

This offseason should be all about finding that necessary edge, and seeking lieutenants who can deliver it. Maybe Rizzo will be one of them.

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