At baseball’s daily version of the changing of the guard — home team leaves the field for its dugout, allowing the visitors to embark upon their pregame work — Aaron Boone and Luis Rojas conversed around the Citi Field batting cage Friday afternoon, two beleaguered Subway Series skippers perhaps finding company in misery.
Then, as Rojas departed, the two men — who, as members of two celebrated baseball families, like and respect one another by all accounts — exchanged a bro hug.
Both managers, their contracts up, could get squeezed out of their jobs if these final three-plus weeks don’t go well enough. Rojas surely stands on thinner ice than Boone given 1) the Mets face far greater odds than do the Yankees to qualify for the playoffs; and 2) the person who promoted Rojas to his post, Brodie Van Wagenen, is long gone from the organization, whereas Brian Cashman, who hired Boone, still runs the Yankees’ baseball operations.
Yet even if winter arrives for the pair, many of you probably won’t get what you want. For if one or both get fired, it won’t be because of their relentless positivity. It will be despite that quality, which will be found in their successors as well.
The idea of a manager “lighting a fire” under his players is as antiquated as the notion that you best measure a starting pitcher’s success by his wins. Boone and Rojas must take accountability for their clubs’ disappointing performances to date, and one can point out visible faults and shortcomings. Maintaining public faith in their players, though, doesn’t go on that list.
Just on Friday afternoon, each manager independently evoked the “This is fine” meme, sounding like the small-cowboy-hat-wearing dog sitting in a room on fire, as their respective clubs tumbled into oblivion.
“The guys are staying in a good mood despite two tough losses we just had in Miami,” Rojas said. “[Thursday] night, they were ready to get back here. … They’re ready to go tonight. They’re looking forward to a great weekend series against the Yankees.”
Said Boone: “I feel like there’s a ton of confidence within that group right now. The reality is we’ve played really good baseball to get ourselves back into it for a couple of months and just had a terrible week right now, and I am confident that we’ll come out of it and that still even our best baseball is ahead. That’s our focus, and I’m confident that’ll happen.”
If you’ve watched either team play lately, the skippers sound like they’re peddling ivermectin to people with COVID-19. Except this marks the new reality. Look around the game: Even older managers like the Astros’ Dusty Baker and the Angels’ Joe Maddon still hold jobs at least partly because they carry reputations for connectivity with their players. Granted, Tony La Russa’s return from retirement doesn’t quite fit into the same box, although notice that he has avoided controversy since his early skirmish with White Sox rookie Yermin Mercedes.
You want to rip into Boone and Rojas for their in-game tactics? Very fair. Both have made a slew of head-scratching decisions. This week alone, Rojas opted to have Edwin Diaz pitch to the Marlins’ Bryan De La Cruz with first base open and Boone turned to journeyman Sal Romano in the seventh inning of a tie game against the Blue Jays. Rojas, moreover, should get dinged for his stated obliviousness to his players’ “thumbs-down” debacle. Boone must take his share of blame for the Yankees’ early blizzard of baserunning blunders.
The silver linings playbook, though, can’t realistically be counted against them. At most, you’ll get the occasional postgame flare-up, like when Boone publicly ripped into his guys after a terrible loss to the Rays in April. By the next pregame, though, it’ll be all smiles and pep talks again. And whoever replaces this pair, whenever that occurs, almost certainly won’t be any different.
