Once the Towel is Tossed, We Can Change Course

Hi.

We may have met, I’m the guy who’s defended Aaron Boone from day one.

As I’ve delineated, the Yankees have overachieved with him at the helm in his six seasons in the Bronx, and team overachievement, to me, is the mark of a good manager (much better than “but…but…rings!”). And despite the common criticisms of him, he is clearly a bright guy, and clearly is “old school*” and been there done that enough to have the respect of his players.

(*Aaron Boone’s grandfather played for 13 years in MLB. Boone’s father played for 19 years in MLB. Aaron played 12 years in the show two decades ago. Seriously, with a straight face, tell me there’s someone who understands old school baseball more than Aaron Boone…)

That said, we’ve reached the point of the program in which if the Yankees made a change at the helm – which to be clear, would only be “eyewash”, as David Cone likes to say, nothing significant will change unless Hal and Cashman do – I wouldn’t criticize the move. Sometimes change for change’s sake is a good thing and many things need to change with this organization.

First there was the Rizzo situation, during which (by all appearances anyway) Boone wasn’t bothered by writing Rizzo’s name on the lineup card every day even though it was obvious something was not right with Rizzo.

Then there was the hiring of Sean Casey, which was comical at the time and keeps getting funnier. (And no, that’s not hindsight, anyone with a brain could see it wasn’t going to end well as soon as Casey opened his mouth before ever putting a Yankees uniform on. Or a sleeveless hoody, or whatever coaches wear these days.) The fact that Casey and Boone were teammates in Cincinnati during their playing days was repeatedly mentioned from which we can deduce that Boone either a) pushed for the move or b) was happy with it.

Then yesterday was the white flag of the season if there ever was one. In the bottom of the second inning, with the Yankees trailing by four runs, Giancarlo Stanton drew a leadoff walk. Then someone, in their infinite idiocy, believed a sacrifice bunt attempt* from Isiah Kiner-Falefa was the right play.

(*Keyword “attempt”. What’s usually lost in these silly discussions about whether it’s worth giving up an out to advance a runner – it’s not – is that the bunt attempt doesn’t even work almost half of the time, it’s just giving away an out.)

Or two in this case, as IKF popped into a double play. There’s no need to go into run expectancy and how silly a play that was, or how silly it is to play for one run at any point in the game ever unless you’re the home team batting in the bottom of the 9^th of a tie game. It was clearly a dumb play regardless of whether IKF did it on his own or if it was called from the bench.

Yet via Chris Kirschner of “The Athletic”, Boone after the game said the bunt was “the right call”.

Check please.

At this point nobody is taking what the manager says seriously. And I’ll stand by my position that if you switch managers it’s more likely than not he won’t be as good of a manager as Boone, but that just doesn’t matter anymore, if it ever did.

Firing Boone would still be a symbolic, public beheading of a scapegoat. As long as Hal’s MO is “try just hard enough that we can’t be accused of not trying” and Cashman’s MO is to shrug and say “we tried, what do you want me to do?” nothing will change. The Yankees will be perpetually not good enough.

That said, if you’re in the mood to bang your head against the wall, the game is on Prime Video this afternoon. If you don’t want to bang your head against the wall, MLB.tv is a great investment – plenty of choices.

Did I miss something? Let me know. Leave a comment below and/or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.