Boone Feeding Fans Loads Of Bull During Yanks’ Tailspin
Devout baseball fans of a certain age can recite Manager Joe Riggins’ locker room rant in the classic film “Bull Durham” verbatim.
“You guys,” Riggins began. “You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. Do you know what that makes you?”
Prompted, Riggins’ assistant Larry Hockett responds, “Lollygaggers!”
When a ballclub appears to be going through the motions, it deserves to be called out. And the Yankees sure seem like a similar Dead Team Walking these days (though not always literally—Boston starter Kutter Crawford needed only 68 pitches to get through seven innings in New York’s desultory 3-0 defeat on Sunday).
Whereas the Yankees burst out of the starter’s gate to become the first MLB team to reach 50 wins this season, they have since seen their healthy American East lead evaporate by going 5-15 in their last 20 games.
How’d they win five, Larry? He’d say, “it’s a miracle.”
So, to paraphrase a lesser screenplay, wherefore art thou, Aaron Boone?
Feeding fans a load of, um, bull. Nothing to see here. Just have to “weather the storm.”
The Bronx Bombers haven’t won a series in nearly a month. I get that it’s a long season and slumps are bound to happen. But it’s not just the bad results that’s concerning; it’s the manner in which they have too often been getting beat. How many times in this stretch have they gotten down like 5-0 before the first beer is sipped? It’s like they’re not ready to compete.
Any Yankees hustling issues used to be confined to second baseman Gleyber Torres with his Tee Ball baserunning decisions and lackadaisical fielding. Giancarlo Stanton always looks like he strolls around the basepaths, but that’s because he risks hurting himself when he gets up off the bench.
But now the infection seems to have spread. The first week of July has already seen two such egregious examples: Trent Grisham’s loaf while fielding a routine base hit into center field; and a Yankee run being taken off the board because Anthony Volpe couldn’t beat washed D.J. LeMahieu in a race between bases—LeMahieu was tagged out going from first to second before Volpe could score from third base on a ground ball to first. That wouldn’t have happened if either: A) Volpe busted down the line to make sure he crossed home plate first, or B) LeMahieu made more of an effort to extend the play before giving himself up.
It turned out that the Yankees sure could have used that extra run in that particular game because closer Clay Holmes coughed up the lead by surrendering a two-run homer in the ninth to send it into an extra inning, where Boston prevailed, 5-3.
The reason why managers like Riggins get so incensed at such displays is because they make HIM look bad. This is Major League Baseball, so the bare minimum efforts are relatively low bars. It’s already understood that hitters are afforded the luxury of staring down their batted balls in case they can showcase their branded bat flips, even if they sometimes lose out on an extra base. Failing to run hard on routine grounders is also typically forgiven.
The Yankees under Manager Aaron Boone have taken it to the extreme. There’s never any accountability. Grisham would have been an easy scape goat—only six MLB players with at least 90 at bats have batting averages lower than his .168 this season.
Nope—Grisham remained in the lineup to play center for all three ensuing Red Sox contests.
Sunday night’s affair was more run-of-the-mill than some of the previous debacles, but the loss counts just the same. The Yankees went down with a whimper, with very few balls hit hard enough to cause a stir. Maybe Oswaldo Cabrera scores on LeMahieu’s sixth inning double if he hadn’t just been doubled off first on Grisham’s lineout to the second baseman.
There’s no guarantee this turns back around of its own volition. The Yankees rank 22nd in the MLB in errors per game this season. No MLB team grounds into more double plays per game. Over the last month, only Cincinnati has been worse hitting in clutch situations as computed by Fangraphs.com—and the Reds became the first NL team since the advent of interleague play to ever sweep a series of three games or more at Yankee Stadium last week.
These stats can be used to show that Boone’s club does not bear down in relation to their competition. Ordinarily, they are signs that a manager’s job is in jeopardy.
Evidently, not here. No one is expecting Boone’s demise any time soon.
As I wrote last month, Boone has had every advantage in this environment yet has registered a sub-.500 postseason record. This is his seventh season; maybe his message has gone stale because he can’t even get his team to play with the requisite intensity.
George Steinbrenner must be seething in his grave.