I already know when the first time Aaron Boone will affect my life during the 2021 season. I have it narrowed down to two possibilities.

One possibility is in Game 3 of the season, on Easter Sunday (April 4). The Yankees will have played the day before, so it will be their first time playing on consecutive days in the season, and with three games in three days following, Boone will inexplicably give guys a scheduled day off in the third game of the season after having played 67 games in the previous 17-plus months.

The other possibility is even before the third game of the season. It’s on Opening Day. With Gerrit Cole scheduled to start the first game of the season, there’s a good chance Boone will pair him with Kyle Higashioka and bench Gary Sanchez on Opening Day, a decision that will have severe consequences in Game 1 of 162.

On Monday, Sanchez caught Cole’s first spring training start, and Cole said he thought the two “worked well today” and that they did “a nice job together” and called it “a good day.”

Last season, Sanchez was pulled from catching Cole starts, and Higashioka was inserted as a personal catcher for the right-hander. It wasn’t promising for the Yankees’ ace to need a personal catcher a month into what will be nearly a decade with the team. The Yankees cited the smallest of sample sizes for their decision and as a backup, they used a high school relationship with the two being teammates more than a decade ago as a reason for the pairing. Higashioka had very little to do with Cole’s success, if he anything to do with it all. There’s a reason Cole is arguably the best pitcher in the world, and it’s not because of a career backup catcher with 72 career games to his name.

Either Cole went to Boone and asked to have Higashioka catch him, or the Yankees made the decision and he didn’t argue it. Either way, Cole allowed Higashioka to become his personal catcher, and he allowed an inferior player to start two playoff games, and Boone, on his own, had Higashioka start another three.

Boone has said Sanchez would have caught Cole’s next start in the ALCS if the Yankees had won Game of the 5 ALDS, but I believe that as much as I believed Boone when he said he didn’t pull Judge from a game last season due to injury and then the right fielder missed half the season.

Boone has very little idea what he’s doing as Yankees manager. His in-game managing is detrimental to the team’s success that he is at times more of an opponent for the Yankees than their actual opponent. His communication skills, which were praised upon his hiring, haven’t been what they were hyped up to be. Under his watch, his 2018 ALDS Game 3 starting pitcher didn’t know what time the game started in what resulted in the Yankees’ worst home postseason loss in history; he has been as wrong as you can be about injury updates and return timetables; he blatantly lied about the health of Aaron Judge in the 2020 regular season; he benched the team’s best catcher in the 2020 postseason without an explanation; most recently, he admittedly didn’t “gauge the temperature” of his team when bringing a scumbag, who committed domestic abuse in front of his teammates, back into the clubhouse. Boone’s best quality as a manager is that he appears to be a nice guy, and that’s not nearly enough for someone whose job it is to manage a Major League Baseball team. I know a lot of nice guys. I don’t want them in charge of the Yankees, allowed to pull Deivi Garcia after the first inning of a playoff game for J.A. Happ as part of a preconceived strategy.

Brian Cashman, in his end-of-the-season press conference, said Boone makes all lineup decisions (clearly not wanting his name attached to the disastrous ALDS Game 2 pitching strategy).

“In terms of the lineup and in-game strategies, those are the manager’s,” Cashman said in October. “It always has been and as long as I’m the general manager, it never will be different.”

The decision to play Higashioka over Sanchez was Boone’s. Just like it was his decision to pull Garcia for Happ, play Brett Gardner over Clint Frazier and use mike Ford as a pinch hitter instead of Sanchez or Frazier with the season on the line.

“I know there’s that narrative about the manager being a puppet and none of that’s true,” Cashman also said. “I’ve never ordered a manager to do anything specifically and Aaron would be able to testify to that as well as Joe Girardi and Joe Torre. They’ve never been directed at any time by me or our front office to do something they didn’t want to do.

It will take very little for Boone to pair Higashioka with Cole again this season and to start the season. I mean very little. If he was willing to play Higashioka over Sanchez in October, whether or not Cole was pitching, he will gladly play Higashioka over Sanchez in April. Or it might not take anything at all. Boone already knows if he’s going to have Higashioka be Cole’s personal catcher, andif he’s going to bench Sanchez on Opening Day. It won’t be a surprise, it will just be the latest idiotic decision on the long list of idiotic decisions Boone has made. A decision that will have severe consequences in the first game of 162.

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There are very few spring training competitions for the Yankees, as there are every year. There’s a bench spot and a bullpen spot. That’s it. There’s supposedly a battle for the fifth spot in the rotation, but we all know it’s a competition that’s already been decided. More than likely, all three “competitions” have already been decided.

Deivi Garcia is the right choice to be the Yankees’ fifth starter. Even if he performs brilliantly this spring, I don’t see how he’s anywhere other than in Triple-A to start the season, and if he pitches poorly, the Yankees will have an easy out to get what they want. Whether good or bad, spring training performance is used at the team’s convenience. If Aaron Judge bats .150, well, it’s spring training and it doesn’t matter. If Gary Sanchez bats .350, well, it’s spring training and let’s see him do it in the regular season. If Gerrit Cole pitches to a 5.20 ERA, well, it’s spring training and he was working on stuff. If Garcia pitches to a 1.20 ERA, well, it’s spring training and he wasn’t facing real lineups. Spring training numbers only mean something to some, and for Garcia, they don’t mean anything.

The Yankees didn’t keep scumbag Domingo German through his suspension and through all the negative attention, publicity and backlash to not have him pitch. They didn’t purposely insert a cancer into their clubhouse and then try to tip toe around his presence by not having him address his teammates until the team’s veteran bullpen leader spoke out against him to send him to the minors. German is still a Yankee because the Yankees think he can help them win and think his disgusting act will be forgotten if he helps them do so.

Because of this, Garcia will end up in Triple-A and be the first starter recalled when the Yankees inevitably need another starter. In the event Garcia is phenomenal this spring and German isn’t, the Yankees already have a variety of built-in excuses at their disposal for their decision ranging from Garcia needing some more work in the minors after a minors-less 2020 season, the Yankees wanting to bring him along slowly or the Yankees wanting to control his workload. The Yankees will easily use any or all of these reasons as to why the 21-year-old won’t open the season in the majors.

There’s nothing more the Yankees love than the idea they are going to unearth how to successfully keep pitchers healthy. Whether it’s innings limits like they have unsuccessfully placed on so many pitchers over the years, skipped starts like they did most recently with Michael Pineda or absurd innings-to-days off rules like they implemented for Joba Chamberlain, the Yankees will stop at nothing to find the answer. I know the answer to the age-old question they are searching for: don’t pitch. That’s it. It’s that simple. If you don’t want a pitcher to get injured, don’t let him pitch. That’s the only way a pitcher will avoid an injury. No pitch count, or innings limit, or skipped starts or Joba Rules is going to prevent injury. Not pitching is the only thing that can.

The idea the Yankees should stash Garcia in Triple-A as insurance and to protect his workload would be counterproductive. Pitchers get injured. That’s what they do. And if the Yankees think Garcia is a big part of their future, he should be a big part of their present. Why waste pitches in Triple-A? They won’t be fake pitches. They will be real, all-out, high-intensity pitches because Garcia will be competing and trying to prove a spot needs to be made for him in the Yankees’ rotation.

I’m fully prepared for German to begin the season as the Yankees’ fifth starter and for Garcia to go to Triple-A and be on-call for a call that will eventually come. The Yankees aren’t going to get through an entire season without using Garcia at some point. That point should be the first time they need a fifth starter.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!