Boone to the Yankees

Although the team has not confirmed the hire, multiple outlets are reporting that Aaron Boone won the job as manager of the Yankees:

Boone will replace Joe Girardi, who went 910-710 in 10 years as Yankees manager and led the team to its most recent championship, in 2009. Girardi had already been a major league coach and manager when he replaced Joe Torre a decade ago. Boone has not been in uniform since retiring as a player eight years ago, but his hiring continues a trend around the majors.

More and more, managers are hired with little to no experience in the job. The role has evolved to become a more direct conduit to the front office, with increasing emphasis on tying decisions about lineups and strategies decisions to analytics.

I am quite surprised. Boone stay in the game through broadcasting, but frankly, I didn’t have a strong opinion of him either way on Sunday Night Baseball. In his first season, he seemed to fill the role of comic relief, with his imitation of other players batting stances and pitching motions.

There were times, however, during Sunday Night broadcasts, that I wished Boone would speak more. I thought he was correct in this exchange with Jessica Mendoza this season, but the debate was shut down.

I thought one of the strengths of Joe Torre was his ability to talk to the press. Torre managed, then served as a broadcaster, then went back to the field. The broadcast days served him well, as he understood the media side of things. That’s a much bigger part of the job than most people realize.

“Look, obviously, experience is very valuable and should be a check mark for somebody,” Boone told reporters in a conference call after his interview with the Yankees. “In a way, I’ve been preparing for this job my entire life. I’ve been going to the ballpark since I was 3 or 4 years old.”

His grandfather, father, and brother were all good major league players, so his whole life has been baseball. I have no idea how good or bad he will be as a manager. He should be able to handle the press heat. He goes into a situation where he takes over a good team on the rise. Boone is being put into a situation where he has a good chance of success. We’ll see if he can capitalize on that.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2j9njrt