Boone Needs To Bone Up And Get Tough

I was as shocked as you were last night.  The game was disappointing to say the least. The Savages came home to the Bronx with the sole intent of taking care of business, but instead were handed their hat and first home loss of this postseason.  I reflected on the loss, which I watched from a Chicago bar on Tuesday night, and after careful thinking and reading, there are a number of reasons why the Yankees simply did not have what they needed to take Game 3.

“It’s obviously a little frustrating we weren’t able to break through with [Gerrit Cole]. We gave ourselves a chance, [but] he made big pitches when he had to. We weren’t able to break through. We weren’t able to get that hit tonight to really allow us to be in that game or even grab a lead at some point,” reported CBS Sports.

Particularly frustrating is Gary Sanchez‘s sub-par performance. Truthfully, he is taking up space in a fiery line up, going completely hitless and currently batting .095 for the postseason.  His passed ball in last night’s game didn’t help matters as it enabled the Astros to increase their lead to 3-0. Boone says he staying with him despite his lackluster performance.  I simply do not agree.

Yet, it is not just Sanchez who is under performing.  Adam Ottavino has been completely ineffective in his role from the bull pen.  He gets himself into trouble with walks and not having the sharp pitches we have seen him make during the regular season.

“Ottavino has allowed nine of the 16 batters he has faced to reach safely in these playoffs. The only time he has lasted to pitch a full inning was when the Yankees led the Twins by seven runs and the Astros by five. That feels like his role for now. But Boone has kept insisting that the Yankees can’t get where they want to go — think Canyon of Heroes — without Ottavino getting big outs,” reported the NY Post.

He has been a dud, like his catcher and if they can’t hack it, Boone really needs to make some tough decisions as Joe Torre did when the Yankees were fighting for championships in the late 1990s and early part of the 2000s.

“Zim taught me that during the postseason you can have no patience,” Torre said of his then bench coach Don Zimmer. Torre shared with Post writer Joel Sherman that “you don’t make friends during the postseason; you try to win ball games.” Torre made the hard decisions to bench players when they were not performing as expected. Boone needs to make these decisions too and if he doesn’t, he is putting the team in jeopardy of moving on beyond the ALCS.

The likelihood of a delay of game or a full out rain out for tonight’s game is probable.  The forecast is calling for rain and specifically heavy rain just before first pitch.  I am not sure this is advantageous for the Yankees, but you can’t control the weather.  What you can control is who you put in the lineup.  And Boone needs to do some heavy thinking today and later tonight in order to put his team in the best position to tie and eventually win this series.  Bone up Boone and do the right thing.

Let’s Go!

–Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof