As has been the case far too often since Aaron Boone’s hiring after the 2017 season, the Yankees displayed the difference between losing and getting obliterated in their biggest series of the season. With the lowest of bars to clear – a single win in four tries at home against the Red Sox, losers of three straight entering the series, to maintain a tie in the loss column – the Yankees have, at best, delayed that lone victory to the final game of the set.
At worst? Well … you watched, right? Unless you didn’t. It’s fine if you didn’t.
A manager can only marginally affect a baseball team’s ability to win a given baseball game on a given day in the modern environment. A pinch-hitting decision here, a quick hook there. Typically, the ball is in the players’ hands when the umpire calls, “Play Ball!” But it’s on the manager to prevent malaise. To inspire confidence. To limit complacency. And to avoid embarrassment.
Aaron Boone’s Yankees, routinely, get embarrassed. At best, during his time at the helm, they have been the second-best team in the league, falling short (in spectacular fashion) against the very best. The Astros, annually. The 2018 Red Sox. The 2020 Rays. The Yankees were worse than all these teams, and when the chips were down, they showed it. There is supposed to be the potential for a different outcome in short postseason series, especially with all this talent involved. The Yankees’ postseason matchups? They go by the books. They lose to better teams.
Since 2021, things have slipped several levels further down. 2022 was their lone season in the group with a winning record against AL East opponents who sported winning records themselves. In 2025, that group is restricted only to the Blue Jays and Red Sox, teams the Yankees are now 4-15 against entering Sunday night’s showdown.
The first two games in this series were winnable. With a chance to send up lefty-killing Amed Rosario with the tying run on third in the eighth inning of the opener, Boone stuck with Jazz Chisholm Jr., who floated through a swift failure. From that point forward, the offense quit the series. They were non-participatory against Brayan Bello, putting less pressure on the righty than Boone puts on a slumping Anthony Volpe, defending his every slip, slide, and slop with a deflection of blame.
The third game? Not winnable; Garrett Crochet was everything the Yankees aren’t in a big game. Paul Blackburn was asked to soak up half of the contest before being inevitably DFA’d. With runners on the corners down 5-1 in the eighth, Giancarlo Stanton and Chisholm Jr. went down in a blink; by the end of the next half inning, the score was 12-1.
Stop dancing around and fire Aaron Boone tonight, Yankees.
Some teams show up. Some teams relent. Winning teams keep the pedal to the metal. Losing teams hand the ball away. Somewhere between 2020 and the present day, the Yankees stopped being the second-best team in the league and became the second-best team in any meaningful matchup. Any attention to detail they once had disappeared. Any sense of the moment disintegrated. Any higher purpose dissolved. Any coordinated leadership effort fell on deaf ears (or was never spoken to begin with).
It’s been rumored the Yankees do not believe in “hot” or “cold,” preferring to believe that things even out in the long run. If so, the next eight seasons of unfettered dominance while the league falls further and further behind the Bombers will be succulently sweet.
Unless, of course, their completely inane theory is incorrect, and their manager has crafted a fumbling culture of limp permissiveness that has pervaded every corner of the organization. If a three-game dissection at the hands of the only opponent who matters isn’t enough to convince the powers that be that Boone has rotted this group to the core, perhaps a four-game surgery without anesthesia will be.
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