The Best Case for Firing Aaron Boone
- E.J. Fagan
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
By E.J. Fagan
August 6, 2025
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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.
Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.
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The 2023 Yankees were awful. Aaron Judge got injured by Dodger Stadium. Besides him, Gleyber Torres was the only hitter with an OPS+ over 100. Gerrit Cole won the Cy Young, but other Yankee starters combined for an ERA over 5.00. Still, even after playing guys like a concussed Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton at his low point, Jake Bauers, Willie Calhoun, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa and all the young guys way too much, the team continued the winning streak and won a miserable 82 games.
The 2025 Yankees are on track to win four more games than the 2023 Yankees. They are currently 3rd place in the AL East. They are one game in the loss column from missing the playoffs. If you replaced 2025 Aaron Judge with the injured 2023 Aaron Judge, the 2025 Yankees would be on track to win the exact number of games as the 2023 Yankees.
That paragraph is insane. Even before the trade deadline, the 2025 Yankees were packed with talented players up and down the lineup. Literally every single lineup spot is improved. Even the Cole-less rotation is way better than the team that rolled out Jhonny Brito, Bad Carlos Rodon and Randy Vazquez full time.
During that season, I wrote that Brian Cashman was the blame, not Aaron Boone. He built thin, fragile, incomplete rosters that couldn’t withstand a stiff breeze of adversity.
But to Cashman’s credit, he built a great roster for 2025. The team finally had a bunch of young hitters. It had some strong depth thanks to Trent Grisham and Ben Rice breaking out. Even after Gerrit Cole and Clark Schmidt’s injury, they never ended up in a situation where they are playing more than one or two replacement-level or below players at a given time. Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm, Max Fried and (for the first half of the season) Paul Goldschmidt all turned out to be solid moves.
The 2025 Yankees are playing well below the sum of its parts. That goes to both run differential—the Yankees are still #1 in the AL with an expected W-L of 65-47 (93 win pace)—but also overall performance. On paper, this team is as good as any that the Yankees have fielded in 2009. It should be better than 93 wins, not far worse.
As Fire Boone whispers have migrated out of the pages of small blogs* and into the mainstream, I’ve seen lots of defenses. They are all some version of Cameron Maybin and Erik Kratz’s defense here. To paraphrase: “The players love Aaron Boone. They are willing to run into a brick wall for him.”
*Fun fact: twenty years ago, college freshman EJ Fagan created his first blog titled, “Fire Joe Torre.
I don’t doubt that Aaron Boone is well liked by players. I’ve never heard a single bad word about him from a player. But it is demonstrably false that his players are better on the field for all of that love. Just a few examples:
The bad:
Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jasson Dominguez were all super talented prospects who are barely holding on as major league players.
None of Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu, Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks, Paul Goldschmidt, Alex Verdugo, Giancarlo Stanton, Marcus Stroman, Carlos Rodon had late-career renaissances. There are barely four good seasons between this group.
Gleyber Torres left the Yankees and immediately had this season:
The good:
Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole are great. How much of that can be credited to Aaron Boone.
Jazz Chisholm has been a little better as a Yankee.
Juan Soto was much better than he was in San Diego.
Cody Bellinger is about as good in 2025 as 2023.
Ben Rice is probably some bad luck away from a great rookie season.
Trent Grisham is having a strong 2025.
Where is all of the evidence for playing your heart out for Aaron Boone? Neither veterans nor rookies are succeeding. The only real pattern here is that players in their walk years and two Hall of Famers are playing well.
I’m going to offer some irresponsible speculation here. It’s irresponsible because I’m not in the Yankee clubhouse and public comments aren’t representative of actual coaching.
It sure seems like Aaron Boone is the easy-grading professor. Popular with students? Sure. The professor’s classes always sell out. The teaching reviews are good. But the students don’t seem to be learning anything. In contrast, tougher graders might be a little less popular, but they force students to learn and improve themselves. Is there such a thing as being too tough? Of course! Being tough isn’t the point. But there’s also such a thing as being too popular.
Firing Aaron Boone might not save the season, but doing nothing isn’t working right now either. Joe Girardi is sitting up in the broadcast booth to tide you over until the offseason.
After Gleyber Torres was put in the lead off spot, he hit .319/.393/.463 and scored 38 runs. He was an extremely critical piece for us getting to World Series.
Who made that decision?..Boone, Cashman, or Fishman? Whoever it was changed his career path!
Yotally disagree. THe team is not good, and Boone is awful. He has cost them at least 4 to 5 wins this year.
From the owners point of view, there is no reason to fire Mr. Boone. He is doing his job just fine. His number one job is to keep the detritus from landing on Brian Cashman and Harold Steinbrenner. The Yankee business side is making tons of money. All is well.
Athletes like to know their roles, and are creatures of habit. In Detroit, Hinch has Gleyber hitting 2nd and playing 2nd. In NY, he hit all over Boone's lineup, played 2nd, moved to SS, moved back to 2nd, and then asked to play 3rd. That was a big part of the Gleyber problem. I can see it happening to Dominguez as well. Does Volpe have a regular batting order spot? They don't learn from mistakes, they double down because non athlete, analytics people have manipulated numbers that show them something else. Its a joke.