It’s a fine line. A manager who puts struggling players on blast often will lose his clubhouse. But a manager who consistently defends those players risks losing public credibility.
In the view of many New York Yankees fans, Aaron Boone made his choice long ago. His willingness to back players, even amid mental lapses, troubling slumps and defensive meltdowns, overrides any concern from the fans.
Boone’s “all is well” demeanor in interviews, no matter how much they inflame fans who believe he is gaslighting them, ultimately means little. What matters is whether Boone behind the scenes is holding his players accountable.
If he is, it sure isn’t showing on the field.
Wednesday night, the Yankees were at their sloppy worst, committing four errors in three innings in an embarrassing 8-4 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. They have now made 12 errors in 10 games against the Jays, the team they are chasing in the AL East.
Boone, speaking to reporters afterward, reacted with typical restraint. He said the Yankees were “a very good defensive team” that fielded poorly in their two series at Toronto’s Rogers Centre. Perhaps. But fans watching blunder after blunder keep wondering when things will change.
The Yankees on May 28 led the AL East by a season-high seven games. Their lead June 12, when they peaked at 42-25, was 4 1/2. Since then, they’ve gone 14-21, falling four games behind the Jays and showing the same bungling tendencies they’ve displayed season after season under Boone, regardless of who is on their roster. The embarrassment the Yankees suffered in Game 5 of last year’s World Series was merely the culmination of their flaws.
By wins and losses, the standard that matters most, it’s difficult to be critical of Boone. Since taking over in 2018, he has led the Yankees to the third-highest victory total in the majors, behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros. The Yankees reached the postseason all but one of those years and last season won the American League for the first time since 2009.
This season, even with injuries to starting pitchers Gerrit Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt, also is likely to end in a postseason berth. The Yankees hold the top wild-card spot in the AL, a league in which few teams, if any, look like powerhouses. If they get hot again, much of the noise surrounding them could subside.
Yet, it always seems to be something with the Yankees, to the point where they are now an industry punchline. The Los Angeles Dodgers mocked them during the offseason for their play in the World Series. After Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe made his 13th error Tuesday night, tying for the league lead, the official Blue Jays account on X posted video of the play with the caption, “You knew this was coming, right?”
You knew this was coming, right? pic.twitter.com/mtvvfTmyCa
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) July 23, 2025
Yankees fans find the lack of crispness in the team’s play infuriating. It’s the kind of thing that sometimes gets managers fired. Boone, under contract through 2027, appears in no such danger. Owner Hal Steinbrenner, general manager Brian Cashman and, perhaps most important, two-time MVP Aaron Judge, seem firmly in the manager’s corner. But the Yankees’ futility when it comes to playing clean baseball ultimately reflects poorly on their manager.
To some extent, the perception of the team’s shortcomings might be worse than the reality, and Boone might be correct in portraying the two series in Toronto as exceptions rather than the rule.
Through Tuesday, the Yankees ranked second in defensive efficiency, the rate at which batted balls are converted into outs. They also were tied for sixth in defensive runs saved, though much of their success was attributable to their pitchers, in particular Max Fried. Another defensive metric, the Statcast-based Outs Above Average, ranked the Yankees 17th.
The team’s base running, too, wasn’t exactly atrocious. True, the Yankees were 29th in extra-base taken percentage, a ranking that perhaps should be higher considering Cashman’s efforts last offseason to make the team more athletic. But only the Astros had run into fewer outs on the bases, a fact that might surprise fans who were aghast over Jorbit Vivas’ getting thrown out by Ronald Acuña Jr. Friday night tagging from second to third.
The numbers are one thing. Too often, the Yankees fail the eye test. Volpe lately has been the center of not only that discussion but also the debate over whether Boone is too publicly forgiving of his players. Volpe’s the baseball equivalent of a teacher’s pet, and it’s not just Boone who protects him. It’s the entire organization.
Boone finally acknowledged Volpe’s offensive struggles Tuesday, dropping him to the ninth in the batting order for the first time this season. Volpe moved up to the seventh spot Wednesday and hit his 13th home run. He is still quite young — he turned 24 in April — but this is his third season as a regular. Among players with at least 1,500 plate appearances in that span, he entered Wednesday ranked 76th out of 76 in batting average (.224), on-base percentage (.287) and OPS (.664).
Lest we forget, Volpe and Oswald Peraza once were the jewels of the Yankees farm system, untouchable in trade talks, impediments to the team’s pursuing free agents such as Corey Seager and Trea Turner. Peraza, whom the Yankees are likely to replace at third base before the trade deadline, hasn’t recovered from Volpe’s beating him out for the shortstop’s job in 2023. Volpe, Boone keeps insisting, is a good player. In his first postseason last year, he batted .286 with an .815 OPS.
The Yankees’ logic seems to be that Volpe will be more than adequate if he can get his OPS into the .700 range and again play the defense that won him a Gold Glove in 2023. It’s not absurd to envision him doing both of those things. But in every aspect of his game, Volpe is regressing. A year ago, he ranked 14th among shortstops in fWAR. This year, he ranks 24th out of 25, ahead of only the Milwaukee Brewers’ Joey Ortiz.
Fans, then, grow understandably impatient when Boone glosses over Volpe’s failings as well as the failings of other Yankees. The days of managers publicly ripping players are long gone. Earlier this month, the reaction of Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy stood out when he was asked why he held Ortiz out of the lineup a second straight day. Asked whether Ortiz was dealing with something, Murphy replied, “Yeah, the manager’s pissed. I want him to give me his best approach at the plate every day, and we’ve given him a lot. We’re playing him every day, and he just can’t have lapses at the plate.”
Such reactions are the outliers. Besides, players can be held accountable in more meaningful ways: by dropping them in the order, as Boone did with Volpe on Tuesday. Or by benching them entirely, as the Dodgers did with none other than Mookie Betts on Saturday. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters he wanted to give Betts mental relief, even though it was only the second game after the All-Star break.
Boone, who speaks to the media both before and after games, will acknowledge, in his own milquetoast manner, when the Yankees need to play better. His ability to connect with players is one reason the Yankees hired him to replace Joe Girardi, who could be too uptight. But at times, it seems the Yankees have gone from one extreme to the other.
Again, a team’s performance is what matters, not a manager acting performatively. Well, the Yankees’ performance is again lacking. And until they play cleaner baseball, it will be fair to question whether Boone is doing enough to hold the players accountable. If he is not, the accountability ultimately will fall on him.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
