Erik Boland: Yankees' Aaron Boone's 'broken' alibi fails to mask reality of Blue Jays dominance
Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone speaks at a news conference at the start of Spring Training at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
TAMPA, Fla. – Aaron Boone should have just stuck with his comment from the winter meetings regarding the Yankees’ 2025 performance against the defending AL champion Blue Jays.
“They kicked our [butt] last year,” Boone said in December at the meetings in Orlando.
Blunt. Fair. Accurate.
The Yankees, after all, went 5-8 against the Blue Jays in the regular season. That mark gave Toronto the AL East title via tiebreaker after both teams finished 94-68. Next came a matchup in the best-of-five ALDS where the Yankees lost in four games.
But Boone, entering his 10th season as Yankees manager — a tenure that to this point has netted no World Series titles and one World Series appearance — during Wednesday’s wide-ranging spring training kickoff news conference sounded as if he were vacationing from reality when it came to the topic.
“They beat us up in Toronto in like a stretch where we played them, I think, two series, like seven games up there in the course of a few weeks when we were a little bit broken,” Boone said. “We weren’t at our best at all. So I think that played a role.”
There is a modicum — but just a modicum — of truth to that.
Boone, whose pitchers and catchers take the field Thursday for their first official workout, was referencing a span from last June 30-July 23 when the Yankees played two series in Toronto, losing six of those games, including a four-game sweep from June 30-July 3. Those seven games occurred during a 20-31 stretch from June 13-Aug. 10 when, as Boone said, the Yankees indeed did seem broken.
Except . . .
The we-weren’t-at-our-best alibi disintegrates when looking at the postseason.
Boone, signed through the 2027 season after having his contract extended last spring, said on the eve of last postseason he felt the “best” about the prospects of that Yankees team going into October than any of his previous teams (eight of which qualified for the playoffs).
The Yankees beat the Red Sox in a three-game Wild Card dogfight, aided by Boston banana-peeling themselves in Game 2 and Cam Schlittler’s historic brilliance in a deciding Game 3. Then came the Blue Jays.
And the Yankees, as in the regular season, got run over.
They were outscored by a combined 23-8 in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto and fell behind 6-1 early in Game 3 at the Stadium before Aaron Judge and the bullpen helped stave off elimination in a 9-6 victory. The Yankees fell meekly, 5-2, against eight Blue Jays relievers in Game 4 to give Boone one more notch of disappointment on his October belt.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa, a Yankee from 2022-23 and a Blue Jays reserve last season who this winter signed with the Red Sox, poured additional salt in what clearly remains a festering wound when he said on Tuesday that it “100%” was a topic in the Toronto clubhouse that the Blue Jays hoped to face the Yankees in the Division Series.
“We definitely felt like it [Boston] was a tougher matchup for us,” Kiner-Falefa said, mentioning the desire to avoid Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet as a significant reason. “So, once we saw the other team [win], we were a lot happier.”
Asked about that Wednesday, Boone looked the way he does when someone suggests he’s not 100% in charge of daily lineup construction.
“I guess he was right,” Boone said with a half-hearted chuckle. “Little surprising to hear IKF say that but whatever. That’s fine.”
Boone, whose ability to build relationships with players is among his greatest strengths, could not have been that surprised. Or shouldn’t have been.
Kiner-Falefa, though not a flashy quote, is an exceedingly honest one. So much to the point that during a rough 2022 in the field when Boone repeatedly contended the Yankees' “internal numbers” rated Kiner-Falefa as a “top” defensive shortstop, the player himself pushed back.
“I stink right now,” the always accountable Kiner-Falefa said multiple times that season.
Boone’s answer to Kiner-Falefa Wednesday should have began and ended with “I guess he was right.”
Or perhaps adding: “Well, obviously, they wanted to play us. If I was in that clubhouse and had the success against us they did, I would have felt the same way. They kicked our [butt] last year.”
Blunt. Fair. Accurate.
Reality.
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.
