Listening to the postgame comments Monday from Yankees manager Aaron Boone, paired with the analysis from commentators like YES Network’s Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill and WFAN’s Suzyn Waldman and Justin Shackil, a recurring theme kept coming up: they’ve been playing behind since the Game 1 walk-off loss and they haven’t been able to move on from that.
Boone hasn’t been able to get the team back on track after mismanaging Game 1, taking out ace Gerrit Cole after 88 pitches, and bringing in Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in five weeks, to face Freddie Freeman with the Yankees up 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th inning. That choice was made instead of flagging down reliever Tim Hill, who hasn’t allowed a run in 4 2/3 innings of work this postseason.
Since Freeman’s grand slam gut punch in the 10th last Friday, they haven’t recovered. But the counterfactual there is that Boone hasn’t been able to get his players to put that loss behind them. That inability to manage the team in a way that helps his players have short memories should be a fireable offense. He hasn’t been able to prepare them like it never happened; it hangs over the team like a Fat Joe fart…