Yankees' Aaron Boone knows he's facing formidable counterpart in Red Sox manager Alex Cora
Before knowing the results of Sunday’s games – and knowing whether the Yankees would be playing in the AL wild-card round or the Division Series – Aaron Boone briefly pondered the question just about every manager or coach gets with their playoff opponent yet to be determined.
Do you have a preference who you play?
“Be careful what you wish for,” Boone said.
Boone certainly sounded genuine in repeating the longtime sports axiom.
But two things can be true at the same time.
Because as an organization, the last team the Yankees wanted to see in these playoffs, especially early, were the Red Sox, whom the Yankees face in the best-of-three wild-card round starting Tuesday night at the Stadium.
Much of that, of course, has to do with the clubs’ mutual familiarity and Boston’s success this season against the Yankees (a 9-4 record).
Also, the two stud pitchers Boston will throw in Games 1 and 2 – Garrett Crochet (18-5, 2.59) and Brayan Bello (11-9, 3.35), who will be opposed by Max Fried (19-5, 2.86) and Carlos Rodon (18-9, 3.09).
But it has just as much to do with Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
He gets under the Yankees organization’s collective skin like no other manager, the case since he took the reins in Boston before the 2018 season (with a year off in 2020 as part of his punishment for his involvement, as an Astros coach, in their sign-stealing scandal in 2017).
Cora won the World Series in his first year in 2018, the Red Sox that year bouncing Boone’s Yankees in four games in the ALDS. The Red Sox beat the Yankees again in 2021, winning the one-game wild-card at Fenway Park.
“I think he’s really good,” Boone said Monday of Cora. “They play the game within the game really well. I think he’s a really good leader. I think his team kind of embodies who he is, and I think he does a really good job of helping set and define the culture over there … I think he’s one of the game’s really good ones.”
Both Boone and Cora debuted as big-league managers in 2018 and there is an alternative universe in which the latter could have ended up managing the Yankees.
Toward the end of his 14-year playing career in the big leagues (1998-2011), Cora started to be viewed in the industry as manager material and, in retirement, eventually ended up as the Astros bench coach in 2017 under A.J. Hinch (now the Tigers manager).
The Yankees dismissed Joe Girardi after their seven-game loss to the Astros in the ’17 ALCS and immediately began their manager search, which ended with Boone named to the post.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is a longtime fan of Cora’s, and to this day remains friendly with the Red Sox manager. Had the timing and circumstances been different – including the Astros going to seven games in the ’17 World Series and the Red Sox quickly making Cora their primary target after firing John Farrell following a quick ALDS exit (to the Astros) in the ’17 postseason – it is a near certainty Cora would have been interviewed for the Yankees’ job.
Though this is Cora’s first postseason appearance since 2021, when the Red Sox lost in six games to the Astros in the ALCS, he has generally thrived in October, bringing a 17-8 career postseason record in this wild-card series. Five of those wins, much to the delight of Cora, have come at the expense of the Yankees.
“Good players,” Cora said with a smile Monday of his overall playoff success. “They play well in October…good players. At the end, they decide the games. We’ll make decisions based on what we see as a group. We will be aggressive pitching wise, and hopefully it works out again.”
Extra bases
With Crochet, a lefthander, starting Game 1, Boone said the left-handed hitting Ben Rice, one of his hottest hitters down the stretch, would be on the bench. Austin Wells will catch Fried and Paul Goldschmidt, who crushed lefthanders all season, will start at first base…After much organizational discussion the last couple of weeks, the Yankees settled on rookie righthander Cam Schlittler over reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil to start Game 3, if necessary. Schlittler went 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA in 14 starts after taking over for the injured Clarke Schmidt in early July. Gil went 4-1 with 3.31 ERA in 11 starts after missing much of the season with the right lat strain he suffered in spring training. “Schlittler’s stuff has just been a bit better,” one rival NL scout assigned to the Yankees said. That, along with organizational concern about the command issues that occasionally plague Gil, combined to allow Schlittler to win the job.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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