New York City is the epitome of a “what have you done for me lately” market.
The media pressure is relentless, and the second performance dips, everyone from those in uniform to the concession worker handing out peanuts gets hurled under the bus.
Even with baseball’s shaky status amongst the sports hierarchy, the city still revolves around the Yankees.
After winning the American League pennant last season, the club has taken a sizeable step back, clinging to the final Wild Card spot with the red-hot Cleveland Guardians on their tail.
Manager Aaron Boone has emerged as the overwhelming scapegoat for this drop in performance, but one of his former players has surprisingly come to his defense.
During the first episode of his self-titled podcast, ex-Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier suggested Boone is far from the problem in the Big Apple.
“I want to emphasize that I have no reason to back up anyone on the Yankees—as a person inside that locker room who’s been around that guy, if you fire Boone, you have to fire a lot of other people too,” Frazier said. “Boone is just the mouthpiece inside the organization.”
Frazier went on to suggest that even a daily lineup is a collaboration between Boone and the team’s analytical staff.
The overreliance on numbers without factoring in the human element is a plague across the MLB, and it seems like, from Frazier’s comments, the Yankees are at the forefront of that issue.
The only way New York will get back to winning rings is with a dramatic organizational shift.
Not canning the skipper who allegedly barely gets a say in crucial matters.
