New York Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone wants to take pressure off players: “One day at a time”

As we have said many times, the 2020 MLB season won’t be a marathon. It will be a sprint race, with only 60 games as opposed to the usual 162. The margin for error will be, evidently, diminished, and any cold streak could lead to trouble for those teams looking to make the playoffs, like the New York Yankees.

However, manager Aaron Boone doesn’t want his players to feel that they need to win every game. Yes, people have said that the Yankees should feel more pressure now that the schedule is shorter, but Boone prefers that his players keep approaching the calendar one day at a time.

“Certainly my message is you can’t live in that world where, ‘We’ve got to play well,’ or ‘We can’t lose too many games in this stretch,’” the skipper said Thursday on a TickPick video chat. “We got to focus on the day, and the next thing for us is July 3 when we start.”

The manager provided the answer after being questioned if the New York Yankees needed to get off to a fast start.
“That’s obviously going to be the talk on overdrive from day one,” Boone said. “You lose Opening Day and (you hear) ‘You can’t afford to lose too many.‘” But he doesn’t want his players to feel that way.

“We have a plan in place of how we want to attack our summer training,” Boone said. “It’s a shortened version. It’s very important that we use it wisely to get guys built up safely, to get guys in the best position to come out of the gates and get off to that good start.

“But our first focus is July 3 and kind of winning that day and making sure we start laying another solid foundation to put ourselves in a good spot when the season starts. I feel confident that our plan is coming together.”

The Yankees will go step by step, but the goal is clear

The Yankees are looking to get to the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year. Once there, they now things would be closer to normal, at least schedule-wise.

“We feel like we have a team capable of being a world champion,” Boone said. “That’s the focus. That’s the drive. We have a hungry group that is eager to climb to the top of the mountain.”

He says that there will be no added pressure other than the existing one, because the Yankees are always expected to be champions.

“You put the NY on, that comes with the territory,” he said. “We embrace that, and one of the things we talk often about. We will never run from expectations, especially when we know we have a team that’s capable of doing a lot. They understand that. They embrace that, and in this shortened season we’ll continue to embrace it.”