I’m using a new format for our postseason managerial report cards this year. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the Wild Card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series is so short. This year, I’m sticking to the highlights, and grading only the managers who survived until at least their League Championship series. I already covered Stephen Vogt and Carlos Mendoza. Today, I’m looking at Aaron Boone.
My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in behind closed doors for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.
I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Luke Weaver and Brent Honeywell were also important contributors this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Juan Soto is important because he’s great, not because he won the 2019 World Series. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it.
Hitting: A
This one will be short and sweet, because Boone didn’t have a lot of flexibility. For most of the postseason, his starting roster was more or less set in stone. That left only a few questions: who batted fourth and fifth, who played first base while Anthony Rizzo was injured, and how often Jose Trevino spelled Austin Wells. In the ALDS, the answers were Wells, a platoon of Jon Berti and Oswaldo Cabrera, and never, respectively.
I liked all of those answers at the time, with one minor exception. With lefty Cole Ragans on the mound in Game 2, I would have preferred Giancarlo Stanton or even Jazz Chisholm Jr. batting behind Aaron Judge. I think this is a tiny error, though, particularly given that one of the two batters I wanted there was a lefty. It’s a question of maximizing your chances against Ragans versus getting a lefty/righty ladder for the bullpen part of the game. I would have cared more about Ragans, but it’s a minor quibble.
Rizzo returned for the ALCS, which gave Boone even fewer decisions. But after two games of offensive futility from Wells, he made some moves. First, Stanton took over the cleanup spot. Second, Berti platooned for Rizzo with a lefty pitching – fine with me. Finally, Trevino got his first action of the playoffs. One big problem: The Guardians ran a ton this year and Trevino’s arm is a weakness. True to form, Cleveland stole three bases in three attempts. I think Boone was dealt a bad hand here. Wells looked like he needed a reset, but the Guardians were a bad matchup for Trevino. I probably would have done the same thing, particularly given the platoon matchup, but it’s close.
The rest of the series was chalk: Stanton and Chisholm split the cleanup spot, Wells played every day, and I thought Boone did a good job of deploying pinch-runners throughout the series. Not every team has some complex roster knot to untangle; sometimes you should just bat your best hitters towards the top and let them go. Credit to Boone for not overthinking things.
With a week of rest before the World Series, things got even easier. Boone left Wells towards the bottom of the lineup, elevated Stanton to cleanup, and got out of the way. He only made a few deviations from that plan. He gave Wells a half day off in Game 3, using him as a platoon pinch-hitter for Trevino (again, fine with me, and Trevino even threw out a would-be basestealer). When the Dodgers went with a bullpen game in Game 4, Boone countered by alternating handedness all the way down, with Chisholm batting cleanup and Stanton fifth. It’s a minor change, but if the opposing manager is going to use a ton of relievers, you might as well make their matchups slightly harder.
Truth be told, I found it hard to find fault in Boone’s decisions on the offensive side of the ball. It’s not so much that they were masterstrokes, but when the closest thing I can find to a glaring error is giving your slumping catcher a rest in favor of another decent option, we’re probably talking about a well-managed offensive unit. Sounds like an A to me.
Pitching: B+
After opening the divisional round with his preferred bullpen hierarchy (Tim Hill as a LOOGY, Clay Holmes and Tommy Kahnle to set up, Weaver to close), Boone got into a pickle right away in Game 2. Carlos Rodón got knocked around in the fourth inning, and set up a tough decision: Down 3-1 with a runner on second, Boone had to pick between sticking with his starter or going to the bullpen. He went to Ian Hamilton, which is the decision I would have made, and Hamilton gave up a single to make it 4-1.
From there on out, the Yankees were chasing a slim chance of victory. The only problem? Their bullpen isn’t set up that way. Boone tried to mix and match appearances from single-inning guys, but the math was pretty harsh here, as they had five-plus innings to cover without many options. When Jake Cousins got into trouble and needed a bailout from Hill, that left three innings and only the top three relievers plus Luis Gil and Tim Mayza available. That meant Boone used all three of his top arms in a game the Yankees were near-certain to lose. Gil didn’t pitch, and strangely Boone didn’t let Mayza work through a two-out single in the ninth. Trailing 4-1, he nevertheless put his closer in to face Bobby Witt Jr. I understand managing with a sense of urgency, but this was too much for me.
The rest of the series showed Boone’s strong preference to avoid everyone but his top three relievers. Holmes, Kahnle, and Weaver combined for 4.1 innings in Game 3, and Holmes and Weaver each got an inning in Game 4. Both were tightly contested games, and both absolutely called for the top arms. Boone wasn’t afraid to rise to the occasion and hammer his best guys.
If anything, I think that Boone’s trust in those guys led him to leave Game 3 starter Clarke Schmidt in a batter or two too long; he wanted to push Schmidt until he could use only elite relievers the rest of the way, but Schmidt’s last three opponents went single/double/triple to tie the game, making everything higher stress the rest of the way. Still, what are you supposed to do? Not use your elite relievers in close games? Good work putting the pedal to the metal here, in my opinion.
Boone stuck with this same pattern in the ALCS against the Guardians. After Rodón went six strong in Game 1, Holmes pitched a clean inning. Hill got roughed up in the eighth, so Weaver came in for a five-out save. I like that Boone got a little cute here – the Yankees took a 5-1 lead in the bottom of the seventh, so Boone tried to go down the leverage totem pole a bit with Hill. I also like that he stopped messing around when the game got close.
In Game 2, Gerrit Cole didn’t have it. He did a great job working around damage, but he gave up six hits and four walks in just 4.1 innings. Boone left Cole in for longer than most would have with a 3-0 lead in the game, but I liked the decision. Cole was the team’s best bet to give the bullpen some relief. But when he loaded the bases with a walk in the fifth, it was time for Holmes, Hill, Kahnle, and Weaver again. They did the job, though Weaver, pitching in his sixth straight game, surrendered a solo shot in the ninth.
Game 3 showed the perils of relying so heavily on only a few relievers. Schmidt had another rough outing, and departed after a José Ramírez double put a runner in scoring position with two outs in the fifth. I like the idea by Boone here – he let Schmidt face batters a third time through, but the instant there was danger, he pulled the plug. But Schmidt’s short start put yet more pressure on Weaver and his understudies, and they finally cracked.
Boone brought Kahnle in with the Yankees trailing by two. When the offense scored three to grab the lead in the top of the eighth, Boone did the math and tried to use Kahnle and Weaver to cover the final three innings in aggregate (Kahnle had already handled the seventh). Weaver’s seventh appearance in seven games, and the fourth multi-inning stint, led to him leaving a changeup middle-middle that became a game-tying homer off the bat of Jhonkensy Noel. That wasn’t fated to happen, but the risk factor was certainly high. Then Holmes, also on his seventh appearance, gave up a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th to David Fry. It was a rough day for New York’s best relievers.
I honestly don’t think Boone did anything wrong here. As I already mentioned, I thought he was a little too happy to use his good arms when trailing against the Royals. But other than that, they were exclusively coming in with leads and pitching high-leverage innings. He even tried to stretch his starters for a few extra batters to lighten the load where he could. He simply didn’t trust anyone else in the bullpen for more than a few batters at a time, and made the calculation that an exhausted Weaver was still a better option. I’m inclined to agree.
In any case, Weaver’s outrageous workload finally earned him a day off in Game 4, even as Gil lasted a mere four innings. Luckily (?), Mark Leiter Jr. had just joined the roster thanks to Hamilton getting injured, which meant he was fresh. He immediately got high-leverage innings because the bullpen was absolutely wrecked, and he saved Boone’s bacon by replacing a gassed Holmes and lasting 1.2 innings. Did he give up the lead after committing a ghastly throwing error? Sure. But to me, and presumably to Boone, he looked amazing relative to the other options. Kahnle closed out the game after the Yankees scored in the top of the ninth.
Amazingly, the Yankees played yet another close game to close out the ALCS. This time, Rodón was cooking early. But after surrendering three hits in four batters, and with the scary part of Cleveland’s order due up, Boone turned to his new security blanket, Leiter. Leiter wiggled out of the jam, and Boone showed that he was willing to extend more relievers than just his top few by leaning on Hill and Cousins for a pair of four-out stints (Kahnle and Holmes were unavailable). When the game remained knotted at two into the bottom of the ninth, Boone never hesitated. Weaver came in to throw a clean inning, then remained in the game after Soto clobbered a three-run homer in the top of the 10th. A two-inning save sent the Yankees to the World Series, a fitting capper to Weaver’s exceptionally high usage throughout the championship series.
Boone stuck to the game plan on the biggest stage. After Cole opened Game 1 with a strong six innings, Boone went batter-to-batter in the seventh, and brought in his cleanup crew as soon as a runner reached. That cleanup crew did terribly. Holmes only lasted two outs, with Kahnle coming in to face a lefty with two runners in scoring position. An inning later, Kahnle gave up a double and an error to put Shohei Ohtani on third with only one out. Weaver came in, failed to strike out Mookie Betts (hey, it happens), and thus let a sacrifice fly tie the game. Weaver did recover to pitch a clean ninth to send it to extras, but even Boone wasn’t going to push him more than five outs across two innings.
That led to one of the biggest moments of the series. The Yankees pushed a run across in the top of the 10th. Then, after Cousins got roughed up by the bottom of the order and put two on, Boone had to bring in a new reliever to face all the scary Dodgers. He went with Nestor Cortes, in his first game action in a month. Cortes got away with a cookie to Ohtani, intentionally walked Betts, and then gave up an iconic walk-off grand slam to Freddie Freeman. I’ve already written about these decisions, but to recap, I didn’t like bringing in Cortes but did like walking Betts.
Game 2 offered the Yankees bullpen a respite. Unfortunately, that’s because Rodón got knocked around. For the record, I don’t think Boone could do anything here except be sad that his second-best starter gave up three home runs in three-plus innings. Somehow Holmes and Leiter still pitched in this game, in a spot where I would have preferred some kind of bulk reliever, but the Yankees just didn’t have that option unless they wanted to bring Cortes back. I think I’d do what Boone did here anyway, to be honest; they had an off day coming up and it felt like a good time to push some chips in and hope the offense could dig out of a 4-1 hole. They just couldn’t quite do it.
In Game 3, Schmidt got tattooed and didn’t make it out of the third inning. Leiter came in to wriggle out of a bases-loaded jam and then the Yankees fired off a succession of relievers, including getting five outs from Cortes. They still needed seven relievers to get through a game that they never got particularly close to winning, including the entire top trio. I generally liked Boone’s aggressive management style, but what was Weaver doing facing the Dodgers’ best hitters with the Yankees down four runs in the ninth? Boone’s strategy all October involved using Weaver for huge chunks of outs whenever possible. They had two must-win games coming up in the next two days. Why force him to warm up for a game whose outcome was hardly in doubt at that point, much less pitch in it?
True to form, Weaver worked hard in Game 4. Gil had a rocky outing, continuing a rough stretch for Yankee starters. The Dodgers were emptying their bullpen of low-leverage arms, though, which meant that when Gil left in the fifth, he did so with a 5-3 lead. Boone first used Hill as a specialist, then went to Holmes for four outs and Leiter for two more. There were seven outs left to get. No points for guessing who came in. Weaver was untouchable. He blew away Betts to end the seventh, then got Freeman to fly out before mowing down Teoscar Hernández and Max Muncy for a clean eighth. He was ready for the ninth, too, only the Yankees put a five spot on Honeywell to end the drama, giving Weaver a well-deserved rest.
Game 5 ended the series, but I thought it was well managed by Boone. After a disastrous, three-error fifth inning turned a 5-0 lead into a tie ballgame, Boone did a little counting, looked at Cole, and told him to keep going. The Yankees pushed a run across and Cole got another five outs, ones that Boone had no other good options to cover, before yielding to Holmes to close out the seventh. I’d prefer a tired Cole to a fresh Cortes in that spot, so I loved this decision.
The only problem? The game didn’t end there. Kahnle started the eighth inning by allowing three straight baserunners. Weaver came in, pitching on three straight days for the first time in his career, and didn’t quite have it. Two sacrifice flies flipped the game from a one-run Yankees lead to a one-run Dodgers lead, and that was all she wrote. Weaver ran out of gas at the worst possible moment, though given his workload, it was only a matter of time.
In a broad sense, I appreciated Boone’s pitching management quite a bit. He looked at his team and saw only a few viable relievers, but also noticed that those relievers could cover multiple innings. He set out to use them as often as he could, and the Yankees kept playing close games, so “as often as he could” turned out to be pretty much every game. The penultimate game of the World Series was their first contest all October decided by more than three runs, and even that one was a two-run game heading into the bottom of the eighth.
Did he make some decisions that I, with the benefit of hindsight and of going through all of these games with a fine-toothed comb, wouldn’t have? Sure. In particular, I think he was too quick to go to Weaver in games where the outcome wasn’t likely to change. But none of these decisions were egregious, and I thought he handled a tough problem — harmonizing starter workloads and bullpen strategy — well. If you’re going to stretch a select few relievers because you’re terrified of the rest of the ‘pen, you should lean on your good starters too. Boone consistently gave guys a little more rope than most of today’s managers do, and with good reason: he needed those outs.
Did those decisions cost him? Sometimes, but only in a marginal and probabilistic way. It’s not like going two batters too long with Rodón instead of using Mayza, for a hypothetical example, is a massive blunder. The third time through the order penalty exists, but the “good pitchers are better at pitching” bonus does too. You can imagine a more saber-orthodox manager pulling his starters at the first sign of trouble, only to look at the bullpen and despair. I thought the contextual choices here were excellent.
If it weren’t for two decisions in particular – using Weaver while trailing by multiple runs in Game 2 of the ALDS and Game 3 of the World Series – I’d have little to complain about here. I didn’t like bringing in Cortes in the first game of the World Series, but I’m cutting Boone some slack because I just don’t have enough data. I dislike it, but my dislike mostly comes down to vibes. That aside, Boone’s strategy felt to me like the team’s best chance. It’s a shame that the starters and offense couldn’t combine to give them a few blowouts and rest the good relievers, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Still, Weaver was the best reliever in the playoffs, and Boone consistently used him for hugely important outs that covered up a pretty weak pitching operation. That deserves a B+ in my book.
