Tuesday Discussion: Aaron Boone

July 8, 2025

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This week we asked our writers the following:

Is it time for the Yankees to move on from Aaron Boone as their manager?

Here are their responses...

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Tamar Chalker - Yes. I have wanted to see Boone succeed, but at this point it is hard to see him taking this team to a World Series win. It feels like his tenure has been marred by not stop injuries and in recent years I believe they have changed just about every coach and/or strength and conditioning personnel, yet it continues. This team has underperformed way too often under Boone. It’s time to find someone new. 

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Lincoln Mitchell - The short answer to this question is yes. Of course, it is time to move on from Aaron Boone. Boone has now managed 1,122 games, seventh most in baseball history and has still not won a World Series. I may surprise some to learn that two of the managers above him on this list are his immediate predecessors Joe Girardis (6th) and Joe Torre (2nd). The Yankees are in a period of unprecedented managerial stability. Unfortunately, that does not make Boone a good manager. Boone is not a terrible manager. He seems to relate well to the players, handle the media relatively well and is not bad at getting the most out of some of his players. However, he still seems to have no deep sense of the game. His decisions regarding when to remove pitchers, what pitchers to use in key situations, reluctance to pinch hit and tendency to either not rest players enough or rest them at the wrong times are the kinds of things one might expect from a manager who does not have a sixth sense about baseball. This is particularly odd given that Boone was a solid big league ballplayer and is the son, grandson and brother of big leaguers. Baseball is in his blood, but he still seems oddly foreign to the game.

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Paul Semendinger - If the Yankees' main objective was to win World Series, the hiring of Aaron Boone, a person with no experience at any level as a manager or a coach, made no sense. Once he demonstrated that he is not a very good manager, giving him new contracts made even less sense.

Aaron Boone has been given ample opportunities to win a World Championship - longer than any manager in the history of the franchise. He has not delivered.

It's time for the Yankees to move on. It's way past time. He should never been hired to manage the Yankees in the first place. A new manager needs to come in and have the authority to make decisions and run the team. If that is impossible under Brian Cashman's leadership structure, Mr. Cashman needs to go as well.

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Derek McAdam - The Yankees are definitely in a slump, but I think this is a decision that can be made in the off-season. I think they can turn things around soon and still have a good chance of making another run in the playoffs.

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Ed Botti - With certain exceptions, I am not a fan of in season changes to the coaching staff, because all it really tells me is the person or persons responsible for making the change(s), failed to see the need for change just few short months ago in the offseason,  retained their job and status after such drastic and failed evaluations, and now conveniently blames someone else, to artificially shift the blame. Boone is no different today then he was last year, the year before, etc.......

Cashman hand picked Boone,  sold ownership on Boone, and extended Boone, twice.

Sorry, but the problems with this team do not fall exclusively at the feet of Boone. Not even close.

Don't get me wrong, I do not see Boone as an elite leader and/or tactician. Not by a long shot.  I can bore you with numerous questionable and failed moves he makes every year, that we all know and discussed over and over, so I wont.

But if Boone is let go, so should the GM be let go. If a change is warranted, it should be exactly the same as we just saw in DC. Both president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez were replaced together, as a single failed management team. And they won the 2019 World Series!

Otherwise,  it is simply a band aid over a torn muscle.

Whether or not we agree with the DC moves is irrelevant, it shows that managing principal owner Mark Lerner, at the very least, has the guts to make the moves he saw needed for his organization to move forward and get better.

I seriously  doubt Steinbrenner has the nerve or guts to make either move. Moves that he should have made years ago for the betterment of this organization.

Therefore what is really needed, is for the team to be sold.

Don't hold your breath.

But, I have been wrong before,  just ask my wife!

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James Vlietstra - Anyone clamoring for Aaron Boone to be replaced, doesn’t understand how the Yankees front office works. So long as Brian Cashman is the General Manager, any manager will be hired with a specific approach to coaching that relies heavily on directives put forth by the analytics department of the front office. 

So long as the Steinbrenner family owns the franchise, Cashman is the GM. 

So don’t count on a new manager to come in with a new philosophy and shake everything up and really change the culture. 

It is possible that they would replace Boone, but it would be with a clone of Boone. 

Now one thing I would be all onboard for is the Steinbrenner family to sell.  According to Forbes, the Yankees are currently worth $8.2B. I would imagine that the asking price for everything, including the Stadium, YES, and all minor league affiliates and brands would be around $11-12B.

But you can’t sell to a family that is set up like this where family and partners all have their hands out for a piece of the revenue pie. 

You want a BlackRock or Vanguard or Berkshire Hathaway or a Musk/ Bezos/ Walton family. Someone who sees the team bring in $728M (2024) in revenue and realize if they actually win a World Series, it grows the brand and increases value so spending more now makes the investment more valuable down the road. 

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Cary Greene - Boone is kind of a modern day Bob Lemon. Yes, it beyond time. The Boss would have made a change long ago. Hal however,  he's second place to his own father and happy to make the playoffs and call it a success. Times have really changed in the Bronx and not for the better. Say what you will about organizational continuity and stability,  but answer me this? Is handling the New York media really the most important thing to look for in a manager? Is that what we've come to?

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Andy Singer - Yes.  I have argued that we now have years of evidence that Aaron Boone's teams lack fundamentals, struggle defensively, and often completely collapse at mid-season regardless of who is playing on the roster.  The Athletic recently analyzed whether other teams throughout the league have significant struggles for a section of season every year, and the determination was that the Yankees stood alone on that mark.  If that isn't the mark of a poor manager, I'm not sure what is.

My gut tells me that Aaron Boone has not truly elevated the team since the "next man up" Yankees.  That was a long time ago.  A new voice is needed, but I'm not sure that firing him mid-season will yield results that are any better without a good in-house option.

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Tim Kabel - Yes, it is time for the Yankees to move on. We have seen these annual Boone-Swoons many times. This could be a repeat of 2023, when the Yankees fell so far out that they were not able to make the playoffs. A few years back, the Phillies replacedJoe Girardi in a similar situation. Other teams have fired managers during the season. I think Aaron Boone never has been a very good manager, and he is worse now than he has ever been before. 

I think the team needs a new voice and someone who can cultivate and develop the young talent on the team. I would bring Shelley Duncan up from Scranton and give him a chance. 

We all know that the Yankees will not win a World Series with Aaron Boone as the manager. Let’s see if they can win one without him as the manager.