Half-measures with Aaron Boone would be a complete Yankees disaster

The Yankees exercised their 2025 option on Aaron Boone on Friday, meaning that, for now, he will get a one-year now-or-never referendum about his future on the job. But the truth is, if this is the only step they intend to take with Boone, that would be a bad idea, regardless of which side of the Boone Spectrum you fall on. 

The only way Boone’s tenure as skipper could be any more uncomfortable than it’s been the last few years is to add “lame duck” to the list of adjectives used to describe him by his detractors. But that’s where we are now, and until and unless the Yankees decide to extend him, that’s where we will be. 

We do not live in a gray age, and so there is nothing gray about Aaron Boone — except, perhaps, for the few strands that have crept into his hair over the course of seven years as the Yankees manager. There is very little neutral ground surrounding him. Ask a Yankee fan about Boone, the one guarantee is that you will not get this answer: 

“I haven’t really thought about it.” 

If you are pro-Boone — and your humble narrator has been from the start, and continues to be — you begin with the fact he has averaged 95 wins in each of the six full seasons he’s skippered. You’d add his being 6-for-7 on playoff appearances. Maybe you could mention the steep pile of Hall of Fame managers who trail Boone’s .584 winning percentage so far. Or that his approval rating in his own clubhouse is strong, never a given in pro sports. It’s easy to manage the Yankees to the playoffs? Tell that to Joe Girardi who, remember, missed them in 40 percent of his 10 terrific years as manager. 

If you are anti-Boone, the first stake in the ground is Boone’s playoff record: 22-23, which is also 7-19 if you delete October games played against the AL Central, which seems to be part of Yankee Analytics these days.