00:00Aaron Boone has now managed the Yankees for nine full seasons, and his tenure is one of the most debated
00:05in all of baseball.
00:06Should the Yankees fire Aaron Boone or keep him for his 10th season?
00:10Because if you look at the regular season numbers, it's hard to argue that Boone hasn't been successful.
00:16Through 2026, Boone has 790 wins to 565 losses as Yankees manager.
00:21That's a 583 winning percentage. The numbers are undeniable.
00:24The Yankees have made the postseason in 7 of his 9 seasons as manager, including 3 AL East titles.
00:32He also took the Bombers to 100 wins in his very first season as manager, followed it up with 103
00:37wins in 2019,
00:39and in 2024, he led the Yankees to their first American League pennant since 2009.
00:44So the positives are pretty clear. Boone is also coming off perhaps his best managerial season,
00:49leading the Yankees to 93 wins despite Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Garrett Cole, Max Freed, and Carlos Rodon all missing
00:57substantial time.
00:58Boone is very well-liked in the Yankees' clubhouse, and he's handled the New York media better than most coaches
01:03who have held that same job.
01:05Even his captain, Aaron Judge, has repeatedly defended Boone, especially after this disappointing end to the season.
01:11Yeah, he's our manager. He's running this ship. He's, you know, he puts us in the right position to go
01:16out there and succeed,
01:16you know, especially a season like this where, you know, I'm banged up, missing 100 games.
01:20You know, you miss Big G, Cole, Rodon, you know, miss a lot of guys, shrink us from for a
01:25little bit.
01:25Cody Bellinger, who was an MVP for us, you know, for him to manage it the way he did and,
01:30you know,
01:30put us in the best position to get into the postseason and get an opportunity to win a World Series.
01:35Yeah, he's definitely at our back, and there's a guy.
01:38But here's the issue. The Yankees and the fans don't judge success by regular season wins.
01:45They judge it by winning championships. And let's be real here. That's where Boone's resume gets complicated.
01:51The Yankees are 27-30 under Aaron Boone in the postseason. That's a 474 winning percentage.
01:57That's the worst in franchise history. No other manager has a sub-500 record in the postseason for the Yankees.
02:03When Boone's teams have struggled in the playoffs, it's been when the Yankees played a higher seed
02:08and didn't have home field advantage. Under Aaron Boone, the Yankees have been the worst seed
02:13in nine playoff series, and they're one in eight in those, with the lone victory coming in extended
02:192020 playoffs against the Cleveland Guardians. It certainly doesn't help that the Yankees lost
02:24several of those postseason series to division rivals. Of those eight series losses, two each came
02:30to the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays, and one of them to the Toronto Blue Jays.
02:34The other two series losses, meanwhile, came in the ALCS to the Houston Astros, and of course,
02:39who can forget the World Series loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, both becoming extremely high-profile failures.
02:45Look, they've reached the ALCS three times under Aaron Boone in 2019, in 2022, and 2024,
02:51but they've only been to the World Series once. And since then, the Yankees have been eliminated
02:57in the ALDS the last two seasons, both times coming from their AL East division rivals, the Blue Jays in
03:0225 and the Tampa Bay Rays this past season. That's especially damaging because this organization has
03:07now gone 17 years without a World Series championship. That's a franchise record.
03:12And while it's obviously unfair to put all this on Aaron Boone, yeah, I'm talking to you,
03:16Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner, the manager ultimately becomes the face of the team's
03:21postseason failure. The Yankees have now been eliminated four straight postseasons on their
03:26home turf at Yankee Stadium, and the formula remains the same each time. It's a lack of timely
03:30hitting and a failure to execute routine plays defensively and on the base pass. So what's the
03:35verdict? Aaron Boone has clearly been a good regular season manager, but after nine seasons,
03:40the biggest criticism is legitimate. Has Aaron Boone gotten the Yankees as far as their talent should
03:46have taken them? Because in the Bronx, being good enough to make the playoffs simply isn't good enough.
03:51The standard is winning the whole damn thing. And until Aaron Boone does that,
03:56the debate of whether he is the right man for the job is probably never going away.
