1. Eighty-eighty pitches. That’s how many pitches Gerrit Cole had thrown in Game 1 of the World Series when Aaron Boone emerged from the Yankees dugout for a slow walk to the mound.
Cole had mostly dominated the Dodgers’ offense through six innings, allowing one run on four hits with that one run coming as the result of a misplayed fly ball in right field by Juan Soto. It was the seventh inning now, and after Teoscar Hernandez won his eight-pitch battle against Cole with a line-drive single, Boone decided to pull the plug on his ace’s night.
It’s not as if Boone was opting to replace Cole with Tommy Kahnle or Luke Weaver. He was going to go with Clay Holmes who has spent the last seven months doing everything he can on the mound to say STOP PITCHING ME IN HIGH-LEVERAGE SITUATIONS! Boone ignored all of the warnings during the regular season and has continued to ignore them in the postseason. Despite removing Holmes from the closer role during the regular season and despite Holmes allowing a walk-off loss to the Guardians in the ALCS, it hasn’t mattered. There’s no level of disappointment Holmes can provide that will make Boone stop using him in big spots.
2. For Boone, the decision to turn to Holmes in the seventh inning was his second poor decision of the night following the choice to not run Gleyber Torres on a 3-2 count with Juan Soto up in the third inning. But the move to go to Holmes was the move that sent the Yankees on a downward spiral to their eventual 6-3 walk-off loss.
Holmes immediately proved to be a disaster. His first pitch was in the dirt, his second pitch was high and inside and his third pitch drilled Max Muncy in the foot. Boone had brought Holmes in specifically to induce a ground ball in an effort to get a double play, and instead, Holmes pushed his inherited runner into scoring position.
Fortunately, for Boone, his counterpart, Dave Roberts, is every bit as bad at managing as Boone is, and he had Kike Hernandez give himself up with a sacrifice bunt. A free out for a pitcher who can’t handle pressure in the most pressurized situation of his career. After Holmes got a popup, he had faced the required three batters and was removed from the game for Tommy Kahnle. The Yankees would get out of the inning unscathed, but it came at a cost. Boone had pulled his ace and burned through two relievers in a single inning.
3. I wanted Boone to use Cole for at least the seventh and then a well-rested Luke Weaver for the eighth and ninth. Boone still had the option to use Weaver for six outs and with a one-run lead in the eighth, it made sense to. He declined, choosing to stick with Kahnle in the eighth.
Kahnle had thrown 48 straight changeups entering Game 1 and stayed with the pitch to get the last out of the seventh and the first out of the eighth. It’s one thing to throw the same pitch that many times in a row to the Royals and Guardians and the bottom of the Dodgers’ order, but not to the best hitter in the world. To think you’re going to retire Ohtani with a single pitch like you’re Mariano Rivera is irresponsible, but Kahnle and Austin Wells tried anyway. Ohtani banged a double off the wall.
Soto threw the ball into second and Torres failed to get in front of the short hop and the ball trickled to the middle of the infield as Ohtani raced to third to give the Dodgers a runner on third with one out. Then Boone went to Weaver, but it was too late, as a Mookie Betts sacrifice fly tied the game. Not even one full game into the World Series and the combination of sloppy play by the Yankees’ defense and the attempt to steal outs by the Yankees manager had given the Dodgers both of their runs.
4. Boone had been willing to use Holmes in the seventh, but not until there was a runner on. He was willing to go to Weaver in the eighth, but not until the tying run was at third with one out. Giving relievers clean innings isn’t something Boone is capable of. And after watching the way he managed in the biggest game of his career, it’s terrifying to see what he’s capable of on baseball’s grandest stage.
Weaver got the final two outs of the eighth and pitched the ninth: five up, five down for the Yankees’ best reliever, who should have been in to start the eighth, and the Yankees wouldn’t be trailing in the series right now.
5. The Yankees managed to take the lead in the 10th after Jazz Chisholm singled, stole second and third and scored on an Anthony Volpe ground ball. Boone had another chance to redeem himself by sending Weaver back out for the 10th. He had only thrown 19 pitches to get five outs and hadn’t pitched in six days. He was more than rested. Boone declined, choosing to go with Jake Cousins.
Cousins retired Will Smith to begin the 10th, but with the Yankees two outs away from a Game 1 win, Cousins inexplicably walked the 8-hitter Gavin Lux. Tommy Edman followed with a ground ball to second that Oswaldo Cabrera dove for, but couldn’t come up with. It’s a ball that Torres would have handled had he been at second, but he was removed from the game in the ninth for a pinch runner even though there had been two outs in that inning. Another Boone gem.
6. In the pivotal Game 3 of the 2018 ALDS, Boone’s starting pitcher didn’t know the start time of the game. The next night, facing elimination, he let his starting pitcher face the entire Red Sox’ lineup a second time because he said he liked the matchup of his starter against their No. 9 hitter. In the 2019 ALCS, with a 1-0 series lead, he let J.A. Happ pitch in relief until the Astros finally walked him off. In Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS, he tried to outsmart Kevin Cash by using Deivi Garcia as a one-out opener before going to Happ. After the wild-card game loss in 2021, he said “The league has closed the gap” on his team, a team that had never won anything. In Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS, he opted to not go with his best relievers in the sixth inning of a tie game in an eventual loss, and when his team lost again the next night, he blamed the Houston roof being open as the reason. Down 3-0 in that ALCS he used video from the 2004 ALCS as motivation for his players, players who were members of the same franchise that endured that historic loss in the 2004 ALCS. In 2023, he spent the summer telling everyone how “capable the guys in the room are” as they posted the franchise’s worst record in three decades and missed the playoffs. Now in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, in the biggest game of his managerial career, he tried to steal outs in both the seventh and eighth innings.
Even with all of these “highlight” ill-advised choices and impossibly bad decisions over seven years and his shortcomings as a sound baseball mind despite being a third-generation major-leaguer, nothing he has done as Yankees manager will ever be as bad as what he would do next in Game 1.
7. After choosing to not pitch Weaver in the 10th, Boone’s decision to use Cousins had created a shitstorm. The Dodgers had the tying run on second and the winning run on first with Ohtani up. It was the perfect opportunity for the left-handed ground-ball specialist Tim Hill, who had dominated in the ALDS and ALCS. Boone declined, choosing to go with Nestor Cortes, who last pitched in a game on September 18, more than five weeks ago. Unless the Yankees come back to win the series, it will be the decision that defines Boone as a manager.
Cortes retied Ohtani when Alex Verdugo fell into the stands to make an outstanding catch in foul territory. With Betts due up, Boone called for an intentional walk to bring up the supposedly-hobbled Freddie Freeman. Cortes threw a first-pitch, 93-mph fastball down the middle and Freeman destroyed it for the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.
A day ago, the Yankees were waiting on Cortes to say how he felt and recovered from throwing live batting practice before putting him on the World Series roster. He went from facing Cabrera and Austin Wells in a controlled environment to a couple of days later facing Ohtani and Freeman with a World Series game on the line, while admittedly being less than 100 percent, as the Yankees’ left-handed specialist sat on his thumb in the bullpen. It’s a move so egregious I’m still stunned by it hours later. After seven seasons of watching every move Boone has made I thought the possibility of being stunned by him no longer existed. I was wrong.
8. Boone is here to stay. The ALDS win locked it up and winning the pennant threw away the key. He will be here forever. The Yankees could get humiliated in the next three games and get swept out of the Fall Classic because of similar moves by him and he’s not going anywhere.
9. The Yankees lost a game in which they outhit and outwalked the Dodgers. They lost a game in which their ace started and gave them six-plus innings of one-run ball. They lost a game in which they used their best reliever for multiple innings. They lost. agame in which they got to the Dodgers starter and got to Dodgers bullpen early. They lost a game in which they had a one-run lead with five outs to go and then a one-run lead in extra innings with the bottom of the Dodgers’ lineup due up.
This doesn’t feel like a it’s-a-long-series loss or a just-win-one-game-on-the-road loss. This feels like a series-changing, series-defining loss. The Yankees had the opportunity to be up 1-0 in the series, needing to just play .500 baseball over the next six games to be champions. Instead, they wound up on the wrong end of a devastating defeat and now need to go 4-2 against the best team in baseball to be champions.
10. Game 1 wasn’t just one loss in a seven-game series. It was a demoralizing defeat. The kind of defeat that could end this series much quicker than the six- or seven-game series everyone seems to think it will be. That’s not me being dramatic as I can hear my wife from the other room replaying the Freeman grand slam over and over, that’s me being a realist.
There are no moral victories in postseason losses, especially in the World Series. There is nothing good and nothing positive to take away from Game 1. They lost. They let a winnable game slip away twice thanks to their sloppy play, the disappearing act from their MVP and unfathomable managerial decisions: the trio of issues that has always doomed this core.
Last modified: Oct 26, 2024
