Can Aaron Boone's fiery comments after Yankees were swept by the Mets ignite his team?
Yankees manager Aaron Boone walks to the dugout after a pitching change against the New York Mets at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Someone had to do it. Someone had to show a glimmer of fight, an indication of a working human pulse. Someone had to confront reality and say that the things that worked before aren’t working anymore.
It probably should have been one of the guys on the field, or someone in the front office, but Wednesday night, after the Yankees were swept by the Mets in a series that was nothing short of an embarrassment, it was the man at the podium.
“Nobody has expectations higher than us in that freaking room,” Aaron Boone said in his fiery postgame news conference. “We understand that. We’re [ticked] off. We’ve got to play better. This has gone on long enough. It’s very frustrating to go through but I also know we’re competing our [butts] off. We’ve just got to make sure we continue to walk in with the right level of edge and willingness to compete because no one is going to pull us out of it but us…”
“We’re a really good team that has played [expletive] of late.”
Boone’s news conference was interesting for what he said, and what he implied. There’s no doubt these professional ballplayers want to win - that they’re frustrated, even angry. The weight of the Pinstripes is onerous, and especially so this year, in what could be their only season employing Juan Soto. So this isn’t a case of millionaire athletes not working hard enough, or of coasting after being the best team in baseball midway through June.
But both Boone and Aaron Judge touched on a common theme that night: the need to come into games with an edge, with confidence.
“You can read body language sometimes,” Judge said. “There are some certain times where we’re hanging our head a little bit and you just need a little kick in the butt to get going again.”
Or maybe a big one. See, it’s not usually enough to be frustrated, or even angry. Those things don’t automatically build confidence. And for all the flack Boone gets, he had the right idea Wednesday night. It’s time for these straight-laced Yankees to be defiant -- to be assured they can succeed despite expectation instead of because of it.
They came into the season up there with the Dodgers as favorites to win the World Series, had a charmed beginning to their year, and built so much of a cushion that they’re somehow still only 1.5 games out of the AL East lead (with a little help from the struggling Orioles). They were baseball’s dutiful first-born sons, getting straight As and running the family business.
But they floundered when they hit a stretch of adversity and are struggling in every facet of the game to an almost baffling degree. And though they certainly could use a few pieces at the trade deadline, there is no doubt that the current roster is better than . . . whatever this is.
So, what now? Well, maybe they can find some inspiration from their crosstown rivals -- you know, the ones that at one point this year were 11 games under .500.
“No one’s thinking anything about the Mets,” J.D. Martinez said last month during the team's resurgence. “Everyone kind of just has us written off and so it’s no pressure. Let’s just go out and have fun. If we win, we win. If we lose, we lose.”
If you think that doesn’t sound like The Yankee Way, you’re right. But The Yankee Way isn’t working too well right now. And this other idea -- playing free, but also with a gigantic chip on your shoulder -- might be a needed change of pace. The Yankees simply no longer have the luxury of self-identifying as an extremely talented group that’s underperforming. Now, they’re an eminently beatable group that has to prove its mettle against teams that would love nothing more than to see them fail.
None of this is to say that a change in approach will automatically fix the fact that they aren’t currently pitching . . . or hitting . . . or defending particularly well. There’s been plenty written about the moves Brian Cashman needs to make to fix the glaring roster holes that have led to this dissolution. But it’s also naive to discount the mental aspect of a 162-game season that's based wholly on failing a little bit less than everyone else around you.
To wit, here was Boone on Wednesday, minutes after he’d slammed his hand on the table, dropped a few expletives, and insisted they have what it takes to fix this, even without roster additions: “It’s a game of failure. How do you handle that? How do you handle it when it gets noisy? When it gets heavy? You have to. That’s what being a good team, a good player -- that’s what it is.”
Until the Yankees show they can do that, they’re not a good team. Someone had to say it.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.