Aaron Boone might be without a job by the time the story is published, but here’s to hoping Brian Cashman takes a nice long look in the mirror before doing so and realizes this was a mess he largely created.
The Yankees were embarrassed again by the Boston Red Sox this weekend, getting swept in three games at Fenway Park. New York now has been swept in both series against their biggest rival, and sits at 0-6 against the Sox this season.
Boone never has been a great manager, he’s just been fortunate to be steering the ship for a team that often has one of the highest payrolls in baseball. But now, he’s been saddled with a team that stinks and he’s being exposed.
It’s not his job to build said team, though. That’s Cashman’s role, and if the team stinks, then that’s on him.
So, go ahead and fire Boone. But if you look at it from a Red Sox angle, it’s impossible not to notice that Cashman has made one gaffe after another that’s brought his team to this point.
There’s Adam Ottavino, who slammed the door shut Saturday with the bases loaded in the eighth before tying a bow on the game in the ninth. Cashman handed him — and a prospect — to the Red Sox for basically nothing to create payroll flexibility. Whoops!
Then, you have Garret Whitlock, who he declined to put on the 40-man roster and protect in the Rule 5 Draft this offseason. The Red Sox scooped Whitlock up, and he’s now been a key reliever for Boston after never playing above Double-A prior to this season. After a solid showing against his former organization in the first series of the year, Whitlock wiggled out of a Darwinzon Hernandez-created jam Sunday to effectively put the nail in the coffin on the game and series.
The Whitlock-Ottavino combo has pitched 9 2/3 innings against the Yankees this season and only allowed one run.
If you want to go in the wayback machine, you could even point out that Cashman in 2016 released Nathan Eovaldi amid some health issues. He would join the Tampa Bay Rays, who traded him to the Red Sox. You know the rest.
Should Cashman also lose his job? Debatable. But he’s as complicit, if not more, in the Yankees’ struggles as Boone, and his refusal to do anything from a player personnel standpoint is wild.
The Red Sox might’ve exposed Boone this weekend, but they even more so made Cashman look like a fool.
