HOUSTON — Sitting on a Zoom call on the eve of Opening Day, Aaron Boone answered a question about his job security.
The manager has addressed the topic since surviving the Yankees’ disastrous 2023 season, but the issue was raised again on Wednesday with his team mere hours from the start of its season in Houston. While Boone’s contract includes a club option for 2025, this is the last guaranteed year of his deal — and he’s yet to win a World Series or even reach one.
“Do you ever say to yourself, ‘Boy, I better get to the World Series this year to save my job?’” a reporter asked the 51-year-old baseball lifer.
Boone, fine with the question, said, “I don’t know that I look at it like that.” Regardless of his contractual situation, his goal is to be the last team standing each year.
“I’m here to try and win a World Series,” continued Boone, who has a 509-361 record over seven complete seasons as Yankees skipper. “That’s what I’m hell-bent on. Like that’s where all my energy and all my focus is — trying to play my part in helping us be the best possible team we can be, and our goal is to be a world champion. So I don’t know if I look at it as this has to happen for me to save this job. I’m in competition mode of trying to be the best we can absolutely be. And that’s where my focus lies and hopefully that’s where our team’s focus lies.”
The Yankees have talked up their heightened focus a lot since camp began, but it’s too soon to know if the roster in place will bring Boone any closer to his championship goal in a make-or-break season.
Juan Soto serves as a massive upgrade for an offense that succumbed to injuries and underachievers last year, and the additions of Alex Verdugo, Trent Grisham and the newly-acquired Jon Berti will help as well. Still, Boone and the Yankees are also counting on bounce-backs from Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu, who is starting the season on the injured list.
So is Gerrit Cole, increasing concerns over a rotation that already had some uncertainty before the ace’s elbow started barking. The Yankees added Marcus Stroman to the mix over the offseason, but Carlos Rodón and Opening Day starter Nestor Cortes remain wild cards after injury-riddled, ineffective 2023 campaigns.
While those questions and others remain, Boone said that this is “a time of tremendous hope, and that’s what we have right now.”
He believes that his team did all it needed to do during spring training to prepare for the grind ahead. Now it’s time for the group to let its play do the talking as Boone’s future hangs in the balance.
“There hasn’t been a season that I haven’t thought was as important as it gets, whether we’re coming off losing in the American League Championship Series or, unfortunately, last year we didn’t make the playoffs,” Boone said. “Obviously, last year was not it, and we expect a lot more than that. Going into every season there’s that same excitement, energy, anxious, nervous, whatever it may be, but the expectation has never been different. And that’s no different this year coming off a difficult season.”
