A baseball manager is not a football head coach. He can’t treat an MLB Sunday loss in April like an NFL Sunday loss in September, not when he has to lead his team on a grueling 162-game journey that isn’t best served by mood swings. dramas that define pro football.
The adjustments are not as extreme and the reprimands are not as explosive. But right now, with the elimination of the Tampa Bay series, leaving the Yankees at 5-10, Aaron Boone is starting to look like one of those nice NFL coaches whose teams rarely seem ready to play.
Why did the image of Pat Shurmur cross my mind?
Let’s move quickly to the necessary waivers in your prototypical negative baseball column from the beginning of the season: the 2019 Yankees of Boone started with 6-9 and ended with 103 victories. The manager has rallied back over 100 victories. Boone not only proved that he knew what he was doing and that he could handle the harsher edges of New York with relative ease, but he also proved that his form of leadership made room for the human touch desired by Brian Cashman instead of Joe Girardi. Exhibit A: Boone’s support for Aaron Hicks’ decision to play a game after another police officer shot an unarmed black man in Minnesota.
Yes, and the former third baseman was strong enough to hit one of the biggest home rounds in Yankee Stadium history.
But all that matters today is that there are another 29 teams in major league baseball, and the Yankees have a weaker record than 28 of them. Despite a salary of about $ 134 million fatter than in Tampa Bay, the Yankees allowed the Rays to establish permanent residence in their large market heads. The Rays have taken six straight sets from the Yanks and won 15 of their last 18 regular season games and eight of their last nine in the Bronx. If they meet again in the post-season, a year after the Yanks were jumped from the ALDS, the Rays will feel almost invincible entering that series.
Kevin Cash will definitely feel that he has a not so intangible edge in the dugout.
Boone couldn’t be saved even by his $ 324 million ace in the hole, Gerrit Cole, whose 10 shots in 6 innings left him with 39 for the year, more than any Yankee after four starts. Cole was Cole and yet this was not good enough to prevent his team from losing for the fifth time in a row.
Boone even received prior assistance from Jay Bruce, who abruptly announced his retirement and brought everyone in the building – the players, the manager, the media – to talk about another nice guy with a service record. commendable for the game. In other words, talking about something other than the forsaken state of Bruce’s last team.
That didn’t help either. The Yankees entered the game in 23rd place mostly in base percentage, 24th in rounds, 25th in total and 28th in OPS and responded with a two-round total to three hits in the 4-game losing streak. -2. “When we get a pitch to knock,” Boone said, “you have to take advantage of it. … And we’re not doing enough now. ”
Worse, the Yankees’ off-field amateur game did nothing to support the idea that Boone’s team was mentally ready to compete at the highest level. Hicks, the expert golfer, committed a double bogey in one piece and a bogey in another, costing his initial pitcher, while Clint Frazier once inexplicably threw the ball to Cole instead of second base. That’s why most of the 10,606 fans in the stands booed loudly after the exit. They were not only unhappy with the loss, but also with the way the host team behaved during the loss.
“We’re punched in the mouth right now,” Boone said. He has a day off on Monday to find out how to persuade his players to start punching back.
Boone said he would consider “shaking things up.” The most obvious move is to get Hicks out of the three holes, no matter what the analysis says about keeping him there. The 0-for-4 lowered the batting average to .160 and the OBP to .236, and the numbers – along with its defensive breakdowns – won the downgrade.
But if Boone decides to keep his full range and play only Bruce’s inspired words for his team about what it meant to wear laces (however short), he should go to the videotape.
Either way, Boone needs to understand that this horror film from the beginning isn’t just about the stumbling and stuttering stars of Yanks.
This is very important for the paid man to ensure that these stars rise to their billing level.