Former Major League Baseball All-Star Eric Hosmer believes New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone shouldn’t be getting the criticism he is.
The Yankees have been struggling for months now and are fighting for a playoff spot. During their struggles, Boone has gotten a lot of the criticism, but Hosmer doesn’t think that is fair.
Instead, he credits the job Boone is doing and believes the blame has to go to the players.
“I see a lot of things. First of all, Aaron Boone, I credit what he is doing right now, believe it or not. He continuously takes it for the players,” Hosmer said on OverDrive. “You continue to see sloppy baseball on the basepaths, defensively, and he continues to take those bullets, so to speak, in the media. He’s putting his players in a position where it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m going to take all the bullets, I’m going to take all the attention, so you guys go out there and play.’
“For me, it’s on the players. The players need to step up because the manager is taking shots for them; the manager is doing what he is doing in that tough market, so those guys can focus on playing ball,” Hosmer added. “The thing with the Yankees, it’s always been they have all these mistakes they have to clean up, but wait til Judge gets back. But, at the end of the day, when you are trying to win a world championship, you have to do more than clean it up and rely on Aaron Judge. You have to start playing some baseball.”
As Hosmer says, the Yankees need to turn the corner quickly if they are going to hold onto a playoff spot.
Hosmer Believes No Team Should Pitch to Judge
GettyEric Hosmer believes teams shouldn’t pitch to Yankees’ Aaron Judge.
Part of the reason for the Yankees’ struggles was due to Judge being on the IL.
However, Hosmer doesn’t understand why any team would even pitch to him. He knows in certain spots, teams may have to pitch to him. But, he believes if there is an open base, Hosmer believes teams should give Judge a free pass.
“I do not know why teams pitch to him,” Hosmer said about Judge. “Unless obviously they are putting their hottest hitter behind Aaron Judge, I’d give him the four pass every single time. He’s in a tough spot because he knows guys aren’t trying to attack him, he knows he isn’t getting pitches to hit, and he knows he has to get it going. Sometimes that’s only one pitch a night.”
Hosmer makes a fair point, as he believes that with how the Yankees are playing right now, Judge should get walked on nearly every one of his at-bats.
Hosmer was an MLB All-Star in 2016 and a four-time Gold Glove Award winner and one-time Silver Slugger Award winner in his career.
Yankees Manager Knows Team has to Play Better
New York is 63-56 and now six games back of the Toronto Blue Jays for the top spot in the AL East.
Although New York is in a playoff spot, Boone knows the team has to be better.
“The game is littered with dead and buried teams. We’re in playoff position right now. We’ve been through two bad months where we haven’t performed at a level we need to,” Boone said on August 10. “Go back the year before, the year before, you can pick out a number of teams that are sitting in a worse position than we are right now that go on a run.
“We have the people to do that, no doubt in my mind. It’s just sitting here as talk right now. We haven’t been good enough the last two months,” Boone added. “This is different than ’23 where I didn’t think we were necessarily capable of that run that we needed to really get hot. We were out of it at that point. This is different. We’re in a position right now where we’re in control of things. We’re in a playoff spot, technically. I believe we have the people to get it done. We got to play consistent baseball, period.”
The Yankees are holding onto the final Wild Card spot, being one game up on the Cleveland Guardians.
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