Aaron Boone on one-year deal could light fire for Yankees next season

It was hardly shocking when the Yankees announced Friday morning that Aaron Boone will be back for his eighth season as manager.  A few key reasons likely played into the decision.

1. The Yankees made it to the World Series, no small feat considering they hadn’t been there since 2009.

2. General manager Brian Cashman has a good relationship with Boone, who functions well as the field-level operative in the Yankees’ collaborative front-office system.

3. The Yankees’ obvious choice for Boone’s successor, Carlos Mendoza, his former bench coach, is now the manager of the Mets.

You know what was surprising about Boone’s return? The terms. He’s doing so on the team’s one-year option for 2025 rather than a multiyear extension, a cursory button push that makes him a lame-duck manager next season.

It’s the easy call, but also the right one. Although the Yankees finally got to the World Series, which they lost to the banged-up but fundamentally superior Dodgers, it was pretty clear that a very talented roster suffered from accountability issues — perhaps ones that could be remedied with a ticking clock on the manager.

The Yankees were the worst baserunning team in the majors, an obvious flaw backed up by statistics  or just by watching them on a regular basis. They weren’t that great on defense either, although those deficiencies were more limited to a handful of players. Defense cost them dearly in October.

Cashman explained away the World Series loss by saying, “Our A-game didn’t show up when it counted the most.” He’s not wrong about that, particularly in the fifth inning of Game 5, when the Yankees looked like a Little League team, allowing five unearned runs with two outs in kicking away a 5-0 lead. But as the GM performs an autopsy on the 2024 season as a whole and examines how a $313 million roster — the third-highest in the majors — performed like one of the worst teams in baseball for disturbingly long stretches, that accountability question is bound to keep surfacing.

So how does that get fixed? The old Steinbrenner method was an itchy trigger finger with management types and public lambasting for the players. These days, however, the application of pressure has been more subtle, mostly out of sight, but a manager with an expiration date could up the ante for next season.

If the Yankees truly love playing for Boone, as they’ve repeatedly said — especially the captain, Aaron Judge — then maybe fighting to keep the guy they like enters into the equation.

As for Boone, if there’s no safety net, shouldn’t that help tighten the focus all-around? How the Yankees started last season 50-22 (without ace Gerrit Cole) and then plummeted to 10-23 was hard to figure.

Still, Boone got the Yankees to their third division title in his seven-year reign and had a decent report card through the first playoff rounds as the AL Central rolled out the red carpet for his first World Series trip. This season was described as championship-or-bust for the Yankees with the Juan Soto rental, but they instead got a lesson in the difference between their operation and what the eventual winner looks like.

As Cashman works to fix those problems, the front office, from Steinbrenner on down, evidently didn’t see replacing Boone as integral to their trouble-shooting efforts. He’s served as their ideal front-facing spokesman, spouting sunshine during the darkest periods and providing a human shield for the players, whom he almost never criticizes.

“Aaron is a steadying presence in our clubhouse and possesses a profound ability to connect with and foster relationships with his players,” Cashman said Friday in a statement. "Consistently exhibiting these skills in such a demanding and pressurized market is what makes him one of the game’s finest managers. Our work is clearly not done, but as we pursue the ultimate prize in 2025, I am excited to have Aaron back to lead our team."

The Yankees’ statement had plenty of glossy numbers pulled from Boone’s resume. He’s only  the third manager to reach the postseason in six of his first seven seasons for the Yankees, joining Casey Stengel and Joe Torre. Boone also ranks seventh in Yankees history with 603 career wins, and his 22 playoff victories are the fifth-most in franchise history.

In the Bronx, however, those stats eventually work against you. Because on those lists, Boone is the only one among that esteemed company without a World Series title. No Yankees manager had ever survived his first seven years without delivering a ring until Boone’s option got picked up Friday.

Different era, we know. Expanded playoffs, October crapshoot, yada, yada, yada. But even Joe Girardi won the World Series in his second season, then ultimately was dismissed eight years later after losing a seven-game ALCS to a cheating Astros team. To this day, Cashman insists those Yankees were robbed, and it would have been interesting to see if he  would have  booted Girardi if he had gotten them to the World Series.

But Boone is no Girardi, which is why the Yankees want him back for an eighth season. To stick around longer, however, he’ll need to be better.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.