Quick Hit: Boone Comes Up Small

June 7, 2024

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Hey, when it's a big game... and your team loses, it's only natural to look at the manager and wonder if he could have done anything differently.

And if one looks to the manager for this one, it's the correct look. (Please see the game thread. This wasn't second guessing, it was noting the correct moves in real time and seeing the manager making the wrong moves.)

Boone showcased Soto as a possible pinch hitter in the last few innings. Was he bluffing? Maybe. But if you have Soto, and you don't use him, that's simply bad managing. Boone let inferior hitters bat in big spots rather than Soto. (Now, if Soto is hurt and can't bat, that's a different story. But this bluffing then worked... for one game. And, the bluffing didn't work anyway so it was a dumb thing to do, to pretend he could bat.)

Clay Holmes pitched a great ninth inning throwing only 10 pitches. Boone pulled him anyway for the 10th going to Ian Hamilton. Since the Yanks didn't score in the 10th (partially because they didn't use Soto), they had to use Hamilton in a second inning - and after 26 or 27 pitches, he got beat. Ian Hamilton was the last effective pitcher the Yankees could go to. With that in mind alone, Holmes should have pitched another inning.

This one is on Boone. He managed poorly. He demonstrated the BIG concern so many fans have had since he started managing - a lack of feel for the right move at the right moment, the lack of seeing things more than one inning ahead, or even one batter ahead, at times, the inability to make the gutsy decision, deferring to his big name players (not pinch hitting for LeMahieu, twice; not pinch hitting for Stanton twice, not pinch hitting for Rizzo twice).

Boone's decisions (or lack thereof) lost this game. This one is on him.

The worry, the big worry, is that we'll see this type of indecision, being overwhelmed by the big moments, and etc... in the playoffs - not because we don't like Boone, not because we're irrational and emotional fans... no, it's none of that, it is because this is how Boone has managed since he became the manager of the Yankees. He gets out-managed in the big games.

And he was outmanaged tonight.