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.

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It’s no secret I have been critical of Aaron Hicks as a Yankee. It mostly doesn’t have to do with his production (except for every postseason series over the last four years that wasn’t the 2017 ALDS or 2020 ALDS). I know I complain a lot about Hicks batting third against right-handed starting pitching, but that’s not Hicks’ fault. The same way it wasn’t J.A. Happ’s fault the appeared in a postseason game for the 2020 Yankees. Aaron Boone implemented that ridiculous ALDS Game 2 pitching plan and Boone is the one who bats Hicks third. It doesn’t have to do with his place in the batting in the batting order either. My criticism of Hicks all stems from his inability to stay healthy.

Hicks spent his entire 20s injured. As a Yankee, he has only played in 461 of a possible 870 regular-season games or 53 percent over six seasons. Hicks has essentially missed every other game since 2015. That’s absurd, though not uncommon during this era of Yankees baseball in which the team set the all-time, single-season record for most players placed on the injured list. (When you have Hicks, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez on the same team, you need depth.) Hicks isn’t necessarily Jacoby Ellsbury when it comes to being injury prone, but it’s not like he’s that far away from being The Thief either. At least the Yankees only committed $70 million to Hicks over seven years instead of the $153 million they gave to Ellsbury.

Hicks has found himself on the injured list with every baseball-related injury you can think of as a Yankee. In 2016, he missed time due to shoulder bursitis and then more time with a hamstring strain. In 2017, he went on the then-disabled list twice, once for a right oblique strain and once for a left oblique strain. In 2018, he got hurt on Opening Day (only Hicks!) and went on the then-disabled list with a strained right intercostal muscle. He did play in a career-high 137 regular-season games in 2018 and then got hurt in the postseason, missing two of the four games in the ALDS. In 2019, he hurt his back on a 35-minute bus ride in spring training and didn’t make his season debut until May 15. Then in early August of 2019, he was removed from a game against the Red Sox with an elbow injury that caused him to miss the remainder of the regular season and the ALDS, needing offseason Tommy John surgery.

The Yankees have Hicks through his age 35 season (2025) with a $12.5 million team option or $1 million buyout on his age (2026). (I’m guessing they have that $1 million already set aside.) For at least the next five years, Hicks is going to be a Yankee, and for the majority of that, he’s going to be asked to be the starting center fielder. For as much as I criticize Hicks and for as sarcastic as I have been during his Yankees tenure, the Yankees need him to stay healthy and produce to win. I need him to stay healthy and produce for the Yankees to win.

Hicks met with the media on Thursday at spring training and talked about his health and his goals for the season.

On his 2020 performance.
“I was happy with the postseason. I feel like throughout the regular season I had a lot of opportunities to do better and I wasn’t able to do that. I feel great now. I’m pretty much just focused on this year and doing the best I can to have a great season.”

Hicks didn’t have a good 2020 regular season, batting .225/.379/.414, but it was understandable given he was coming off of Tommy John surgery. He spoke on Thursday about how he couldn’t extend his right arm batting left-handed the way he wanted to. Surprisingly, he had the same .793 OPS from both sides of the plate, so it’s not as though he was any better when he was able to use his left arm as his front arm while batting.

Hicks was good in the postseason, as he noted. Well, he was good against Tampa Bay in the ALDS, after going 1-for-8 with four strikeouts against Cleveland in the wild-card series. Against Tampa Bay, he hit .389/.455/.444 in 22 plate appearances across the five games. It was the first time he was good for an entire series since the 2017 ALDS against Cleveland when he hit .216/.350/.526 and had that memorable home run off Corey Kluber in Game 5.

It was good to see Hicks get better (in October) the further removed he got from Tommy John surgery. It was also good to see him finally produce in the postseason. Hicks had been 7-for-54 (.129) with two doubles, a home run, 10 walks and 18 strikeouts across the 2017 ALCS, 2018 wild-card game, 2018 ALDS, 2019 ALCS and 2020 wild-card series. Since that home run off Kluber, Hicks’ 2019 ALCS Game 5 first-inning home run off Justin Verlander had been his only contribution in the postseason for the Yankees before this past ALDS.

On his 2021 goals.
“I definitely see myself hitting 30-plus (home runs). That’s what I want to do and that’s what I believe that I can do. If I get 500 plate appearances, I’m definitely going to hit my mark with those numbers.”

Let’s start with Hicks using the word “if” when talking about getting to 500 plate appearances as if he knows an injured-list trip is inevitable each season. At least he’s honest, and knows he can’t make any guarantees, especially about his health. He knows his injury history. He knows he has never played more than 137 games in any of his eight major league seasons. He knows he has only eclipsed 390 plate appearances once when he had 581 in 2018. That season, he hit 27 home runs in the career-high 581 plate appearances over the career-high 137 games. His second-highest games played is 123 (2016) and second-highest home run total is 15 (2017).

Hicks is now 31. He didn’t hit 30 home runs and only got to the plate appearance number he desires for 2021 once in his 20s. I’m not sure if he’s suddenly going to increase his power, get better at hitting home runs and be healthier on the other side of the 30. At least he has a goal in mind, no matter how lofty it might be.

On his plate appearance goal.
“That’s definitely a goal of mine to get 500-plus at bats, and really see what I can do throughout a season with that many plate appearances, and really see what kind of player I am.”

I think we know what kind of player Hicks is after 2,697 career plate appearances. I don’t know why he seems to be so focused on hitting home runs either. The Yankees have enough hitters whose sole goal at the plate is to hit a home run no matter the count, situation or score (Stanton, Sanchez and Luke Voit. Whether Hicks means 500 at-bats or 500 plate appearances is irrelevant. His goal should be to play in 150 games, not try to be a power hitter.

Right now, I would sign up for 100 games from Hicks in 2021. Yes, I would be willing to sacrifice 62 games and 38 percent of the season from the Yankees’ switch-hitting center fielder knowing it would mean seeing more than enough of Brett Gardner and Mike Tauchman. That’s because I know Hicks. He’s the same guy who two years ago, missed nearly the first two months of the season from that spring training bus ride. That was when he was 29 and before he had his throwing elbow surgically repaired. I don’t envision him getting healthier and less injury prone as he gets older. No one does that.

If Hicks draws his walks and can stay in the lineup and on the field, that’s all I want from him. It’s not asking a lot, but with him, it is.

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!