The greatest rivalry in baseball, perhaps in all sports, opens its latest chapter on Tuesday when the New York Yankees face the Boston Red Sox in the opening game of the American League Wild Card Series, and one top Yankees expert delivered a sharp warning to the team hours before first pitch.
Brian McKeon, host of the Locked on Yankees podcast and a veteran of New York sports radio, said on the podcast that the main aspect of the game in which the Red Sox, who finished five games behind the Yankees in the regular season standings, have a distinct advantage over the Bronx Bombers is not on the field, but in the dugout.
McKeon called Yankees manager Aaron Boone “one of the worst” in MLB and cautioned that a single mistake by Boone could turn the best-two-of-three series in Boston’s favor.
Boone’s ‘Boneheaded’ Decision in 2024 World Series
Where I think the Red Sox are unequivocally, no doubt, better than the Yankees is in that managerial seat. Alex Cora is one of the best managers in all of baseball. Aaron Boone is one of the worst managers in all of baseball,” McKeon said, in a conversation with Locked on Red Sox host Gabby Maljanian.
It completely and utterly can change the series because, I don’t need to remind me, Game One of the World Series was one of the worst managerial decisions ever made and he potentially lost the Yankees that World Series on that on that call to not bring Tim Hill in,” McKeon recounted.
The podcast commentator was referring to a decision made by Boone in the 10th inning of the first game of the 2024 World Series, with the Yankees facing the Los Angeles Dodgers.
As Fansided scribe Drew Koch described it, Boone “made a boneheaded choice that he’ll no doubt look back on with great regret. The Yankees led the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 in the bottom of the 10th inning with one out and Shohei Ohtani coming up to bat.
Instead of going to Hill, “Boone went with (Nestor) Cortes,” Koch recounted. Two batters later, Freddie Freeman hit a ball into orbit and the Dodgers walked off the field with a 6-3 victory.
That gave the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven World Series.
McKeon said that Boone’s decision in that situation cost the Yankees “a seven game World Series. One decision in the first inning could change a three-game playoff series easily. I do think there’s a very, very, very high chance that the manager seat can be can greatly affect this series. It’s a three-game series that the margin of error is so small. It’s just, you cannot deny the Red Sox.
McKeon called Red Sox skipper Cora “the better manager,” adding that Boone’s “crowning achievement is still a hit that he had in 2003.
McKeon’s reference was to Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, pitting the Yankees against the Red Sox. In the finale of a contentious series, the Yankees came back from a 5-2 deficit in the eighth inning to tie the game.
Boone then ended it with a walk-off home run in the 11th to send the Yankees back to the World Series for the sixth time in eight years.
But that 2003 ALCS was the last time the Yankees got the best of the Red Sox in a postseason series. Since then, the Red Sox have won the 2004 ALCS, the ALDS in 2018, and the Wild Card playoff (then a single game) in 2021.