The New York Yankees had their season, unfortunately, come to an end with a 6-4 loss to the Houston Astros in game six of the ALCS. A lot of heat was placed on manager Aaron Boone that he “mismanaged” the team and the losses are on him.
I’ll give the haters this: Brett Gardner had no business being the three-hitter and Adam Ottovino shouldn’t have been brought in a few situations. Besides that, Boone did a fine job.
Here’s the truth: the Yankees’ offense didn’t perform. That’s what killed the season. It’s unfortunate but true. You can’t blame the manager for that.
Fans are taking their frustrations out on Boone when really all he does is make the lineups. There’s an argument for lineup decisions, but at the end of the day, it’s the players who didn’t perform.
Boone has won 203 games with the Yankees in his first two seasons managing. He has a .627 win-loss percent. With all the injuries this season, it’s incredible how successful the team was during the regular season. He’ll most likely win the manager of the year award and rightly so.
Fans have to remember that the Yankees had no business being a 100+ win team this year. Several of their key players during the season weren’t even on the starting lineup for the opening game of the season. Boone knew which guys to pull up from the minor leagues and which guys could compete at the major league level. This gets overlooked and was huge by him this season.
Take a moment and reflect on how many decisions by Boone impacted the team in a successful way. It’s much more than the times he made bad decisions.