There was plenty of blame to go around for the Yankees losing in the ALDS, but Hal Steinbrenner does not include Aaron Boone in that assessment.
“You can’t pin this on Aaron Boone, that’s for sure,” Steinbrenner said Monday via Zoom. “This Toronto series was on the players. It’s on the players’ shoulders, period. They didn’t hit. We had a couple bad starts. Against the Blue Jays, you can’t do any of that when they were playing as good as they were playing.”
That was just part of Steinbrenner’s defense of Boone, who will return for a ninth season next year.
The Yankees signed Boone to a two-year extension (through 2027) coming off a World Series appearance last year, but the club still has yet to take the final step under him and add to its 27 championships.
“He’s a good manager at many of the things he has to do,” Steinbrenner said. “He’s not perfect, I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect. But he is great at dealing with the players, with his staff, with [GM Brian Cashman’s] people and Cash, with you guys [reporters]. He makes overall good decisions on the field.”
Aaron Boone is pictured during Game 4 of the ALDS against the Blue Jays. Charles Wenzelberg
One of the biggest criticisms of Boone’s tenure is the summer swoon that many of his teams have gone through.
Steinbrenner mentioned the frustrating “six-to-seven week period” the Yankees went through this summer where they were making too many mistakes and not playing a good brand of baseball.
Just one of those losses turning into wins would have been enough to lift the Yankees to a division title instead of tying with the Blue Jays and dropping the tiebreaker, which came back to hurt when they faced them in the ALDS.
But Steinbrenner, when asked about the summer struggles, indicated Boone was not part of the problem.
“It’s a difficult question to ask,” Steinbrenner said. “There’s nothing coaching-wise that I feel we could have done differently.”
Hal Steinbrenner is pictured at the MLB owners meetings on Nov. 18. Corey Sipkin for the NY Post
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Steinbrenner has been a proponent of instituting a salary cap — as long as it comes with a salary floor — which he reiterated Monday.
That topic will be central to the battle over MLB’s next collective bargaining agreement after the current one expires next offseason.
“Look, there are groups of fans out there, including my hometown in Tampa, that come to spring training games thinking their team has little chance of making the playoffs — or at least little chance of making it deep in the playoffs,” Steinbrenner said. “Those fans would argue that’s not good for baseball as a whole. It’s a valid argument. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a valid argument.”