Win or Go Home: Aaron Boone’s Last Chance

While it seems that every season for the Yankees has a championship or bust mentality, for manager Aaron Boone specifically, there should be a championship or unemployed mentality this year.

Boone’s tenure as the Yankees skipper has mostly been filled with regular season success, but postseason failure. Despite a roster that has the talent to compete almost every year, the Yankees haven’t gotten any closer to the World Series than the game 7 ALCS loss back in 2017 under Joe Girardi. Since then, the Yankees have had massive additions to the roster, including Giancarlo Stanton and reigning Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole. Now this offseason, the Yanks have added superstar Juan Soto to the lineup; a player who seems like the perfect fit for Yankee Stadium’s short porch.This offseason has also seen the front office address other areas of weakness, including trading for lefty outfielder Alex Verdugo and signing starter Marcus Stroman. With a much improved lineup heading into the 2024 season, Boone needs to figure out a way to get this team back to the World Series. Regardless of the injury woes that have plagued the team every year lately, Boone needs to manage this team better and get more out of his players. Too many guys continue to underperform without forced changes from the coaching staff, which at some point needs to fall on Boone’s shoulders.

For example, last season with Giancarlo Stanton struggling mightily at the plate, the Yankees seemed to take forever to try and work in some adjustments to his approach. Yet, time and time again, we saw him take as powerful a swing as possible, attempting to murder every pitch. The only issue was, he was barely putting his bat on the ball, whiffing constantly. I would’ve liked the coaching staff to work on a more contact friendly approach with Stanton, as he has enough strength to get hits on less powerful swings. The only thing he needs to do is make contact, not crush every pitch to the moon. Similarly, rookie Anthony Volpe would go through prolonged periods where he was swinging out of his shoes trying to go yard for some reason. Not sure if the coaches or Anthony himself instilled this need to homer as much as possible mentality, but Volpe’s skillset aligns much better with a contact first approach than a power one. He has great speed and an extremely good feel on the basepaths, swiping over twenty bags despite a low batting average. He would be a perfect leadoff hitter in front of Aaron Judge, using his strengths as a base stealer to either get in scoring position or distract the pitcher. Yet the Yankees seemed more than happy to watch him take massive upper cuts as long as he hit a homer every once in a while. That simply cannot continue if the Yankees want to succeed.

Though a lot of blame falls on the Yankees hitting department for failing to make these adjustments with the players, responsibility is ultimately on Boone to make sure his coaches are doing their jobs. He seems more focused on being everyone's buddies than being tough on players who need to make changes to succeed. I would say last year’s failures should be obvious enough to force Boone to make changes, but I’ve seen these issues plague the team since his tenure began. So I have no hope that he will actually come to his senses and learn to properly coach this team. While Boones’ seeming refusal to learn from his mistakes should have cost him his job already, this year must be the final straw. Either the Yankees need to win their 28th championship or at the very least make the World Series. If not, Boone must be fired. There is simply no justification to the Yankees keeping Boone as their manager if they once again get bumped early in the playoffs or even worse, fail to even make the postseason. You don’t have one of the highest payrolls in the sport and add Juan Soto alongside superstars Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole and not compete for a championship. There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for Boone to win or find a new career path.