Aaron Boone

I'm not saying he's a great manager, but this guy has been taking arrow after arrow this season. He isn't running or hiding from it, he's taking it head on so that the team gets less of the arrows. He's been shielding the players from criticism by having big arguments with umpires and getting into it with Jomboy. You want a leader to protect the people under his leadership, and he's done that while receiving absolutely no support from the front office and Hal. These recent reports that Cashman is safe while Boone is on the hot seat are absolutely appalling. It's very obvious they're going to scapegoat Boone and throw him under the bus. If Boone was an idiot and behaved like Mickey Calloway or said outrageous things to the media, I would be fine with this, but that isn't what's happening at all. Not his fault Cashman hasn't gotten a LF in 2 years. Not his fault all of Cashman's big deals lately have flopped in comical fashion.

At every turn Boone protects the players and the organizational failures brought on by Cashman and Hal, and what they're about to do him makes me sick.

After watching the whole game and seeing everything that went on, the only logical explanation for the terrible game by the Yankees was that Boone told them the wrong start time. There are three specific examples that clarify this.

1. The most obvious one. Severino started warming up at 7:32 pm for a start time of 7:40 pm. This is very abnormal for a starting pitcher since they usually warm up for around 30 minutes prior to the start of the game. While this is not common, things like this happen, however, 8 minutes of warm ups is a veryyyyyy small amount of time. I thought it was strange that literally NO ONE went to Severino and asked "hey why aren't you warming up" or how come Boone DID NOT NOTICE that he was not there? Why did Boone not just put in someone else to start the game since Severino obviously was not going to be ready? This is because Boone messed up - he told them ALL the wrong time. If he had told them the correct time, someone would have told Sevy to warm up OR put someone else in the bullpen in warm up instead of him. Likewise, Boone said that the lack of warm up time did not effect Severino's start (this was in the post-game conference) which just is not true. Very very weird.

2. I'm not sure if many of you, if any, remember the first inning of the game when Brett Gardner went and talked to the bullpen during the top of the first (everyone thought it had to do with needing sunglasses). While this was probably true, when he came back to the dugout, he took off the shoes he was wearing and put on normal cleats. When the camera zoomed in on the shoes he had been wearing in the field during the top of the first inning, it seemed as if he was wearing regular warm-up shoes (looked like New Balance sneakers). The only reason why A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE would forget to put on his/her cleats before a game AND NOT REALIZE IT WHILE THEY WERE ON THE FIELD would be if he/she was rushed out onto the field. A veteran like Brett would not purposely do something like this, especially at the biggest game of the season, against the Red Sox, while it is raining. If it was a rookie, yeah okay I can see it, but not someone like Brett Gardner who has done this hundreds of times in the postseason. Something else definitely played into his "lack or preparedness".

3. Finally, on October 7th, 2018, Gary Sanchez called A-Rod while he broadcasting the Sunday Night Baseball. Normally, this isn't a big deal, however GARY SANCHEZ ASKED A-ROD WHAT TIME THE GAME STARTED YESTERDAY (October 8th, 2018). While this could have been a joke or something, I find that very hard to believe that Gary couldn't just Google that himself or, I don't know, ASK HIS COACH. The only explanation would be if there was confusion inside the clubhouse about what time the game began.

Given the three statements above, it seems as if Aaron Boone, or someone inside of the Yankees Clubhouse, caused confusion about the start time for the game on October 8th, 2018. This easily could have affected how Severino pitched given that he had less than 10 minutes to prepare. Put together, these facts could place the fault of this loss in the hands of Boone and Boone alone.

If this comes out to be true in the next days, weeks, or months, just know I was right.