Aaron Boone Deserves Far More Credit for Bringing Yankees to New Heights Amid Injury Disaster

If it's fair to absolutely tear Aaron Boone to pieces during a 100-win campaign day in and day out, then I believe it's fair to laud him for the remarkable job of righting the ship the 2019 Yankees have done thus far.

As always, a ton of the credit goes to the players: without Gio Urshela, Thairo Estrada, Mike Tauchman, and an endless horde of castoffs doing far, far more than their job required, the New York Yankees would not be 31-17, missing a full lineup of All-Stars.

But to give Boone next to no credit for guiding a 25-man group of over-performers isn't just; after all, someone has to be instilling the mindset of competing daily in these supposed also-rans.

The ugly truth of managerial status in 2019 is that fans are so publicly vocal that every other day appears to be an unmitigated disaster. The opinions that used to be shouted from the bleachers are now siphoned off in 180-character flamings (though it doesn't take that many characters to call someone a moron repeatedly). Everyone's a genius for one day until a 50-50 move goes haywire, and then a week of villainizing follows.

Boone is far from a perfect manager. A lot of his in-game strategy seems predicated on the next day, and plenty of his built-in rest-inducing strategies seem destined to fail (i.e. keeping Zack Britton on the shelf Wednesday night, telling no one, and using Chad Green instead, in a case of attempted forethought).

But there's plenty to be said for the other side of managing. The type of managing you can't do from a couch. There's not enough good to be said about the preservation he's done of a certain clubhouse aura of "next man up," instilling confidence in folks who've never had it before, and proving he believes in them to carry the Yankees through the tunnel.

This goes for the performance of returning stars, too. Aaron Boone isn't the reason Gary Sanchez has 15 home runs, but perhaps believing in his catcher after a lost season marked by calls for his head has something to do with it?

And, for what it's worth, the Yankees' subs have done more than just tread water thus far.

They've elevated expectations. A 31-17 record is remarkable, any way you slice it. They're beating bad teams. They're handling good teams. They're navigating a 162-game baseball season without half their calvary, and perhaps it's time to dole out credit for that expert work to one of a few man who Yankee fans actually expected to be here.