Aaron Boone is ready to trade in his ribbons for board shorts and a spatula, at least for a few days.
With Major League Baseball’s All-Star break beginning Monday, Boone, the Yankees manager, plans to rest and relax. Boone will watch the Home Run Derby on Monday and the Midsummer Classic on Tuesday, but he will also make the most of a short vacation.
With the Yankees (64-28) owning the league’s best record heading into the unofficial halfway point of the season, the skipper has earned some downtime.
When asked Sunday to describe how the Yankees have played so far, Boone said, “Good.”
He added: “But we are fully aware of how much we still have to do. All we’ve done is put ourselves in a great position to do something special.”
Boone, of course, was referring to winning a World Series title, something the Yankees haven’t done since 2009. However, what they have already achieved this season makes them look like favourites.
The Yankees’ win total is the franchise’s most before the All-Star break, and their 28 comeback wins lead the majors. They are 36 games over .500 and atop the American League East by 13 games ahead of Tampa Bay. Six of their players — outfielder and MVP candidate Aaron Judge; outfielder Giancarlo Stanton; starter Gerrit Cole; hunter Jose Trevino; starter Nestor Cortez; and closer Clay Holmes — are All-Stars and had reason to have more.
“I mean, we’re the best team in baseball,” said reliever Michael King, who didn’t get the All-Star nod despite posting a 2.19 ERA. “We have the best record in baseball and I think we have full confidence. I know we have a bit of a lull here, but we always say we don’t want it to be hot in July. We prefer to be hot in October. We’re just saving the best for the playoffs, and getting a little bit of trouble is always good.”
The “lull” king mentioned is relative. The Yankees had lost eight of their last 16 games and five of eight before the All-Star break. As New York’s break approached, it lacked clarity at times, a reminder of how erratic the club was last year. “The timing of the All-Star break is usually a good thing,” Boone said.
But the 2022 Yankees overall played a much cleaner, steadier and more well-rounded brand of baseball than the 2021 edition. Despite a slight slump, they finished the first half with back-to-back convincing wins and a hitting streak over the Red Sox that spanned 27 games between Saturday and Sunday. After beating the Red Sox 13-2 Sunday at Yankee Stadium, New York is 30-15 against the AL East, a division in which every team has a winning percentage of at least .500.
“It was a good team game yesterday and we carried that momentum into today,” Cole said after allowing two runs over seven innings while striking out 12 on Sunday. “It’s pretty cool, but we have bigger goals and we have a lot more baseball to play. So we try to keep it in perspective.”
The Yankees will regroup and resume the regular season Thursday in Houston. The Astros, the AL’s second-best team at 59-32, have remained a thorn in New York’s side, winning three of five games between the teams this year. The rivals will begin the second half with an unusual doubleheader before splitting, a scheduling quirk imposed by the lockout that delayed the 2022 campaign and postponed games.
“It’s been tough, especially with the slow start to the season with the bye week and kind of adding those games,” Boone said of another strange campaign. “It just added another layer to this 162-game season. I feel like we navigated it well. But we’ve got a long way to go and we’re looking forward to getting back into it after hopefully some time off for some guys.
While the next few days will be quiet for the Yankees not heading to Los Angeles, the next few weeks should be busy. The MLB trade deadline is Aug. 2, and the Yankees are believed to be buyers as they look to bolster a roster that still has some holes despite the team’s sterling record.
The Yankees have been linked to several outfielders and could trade one of their own, the struggling Joey Gallo, who hosts on Sunday. General manager Brian Cashman could also be a buyer in the pitching market. The Yankees have one of the best rotations in the game, but Cortez threw a major league career-high 95 ⅔ innings and right-hander Luis Severino was placed on the injured list last week, a common occurrence throughout his career. Jameson Taillon, meanwhile, endured a bit of a rough patch before holding Boston to one run over six innings on Saturday.
Still, Boone is confident in his staff, calling it one of the “driving forces” behind his team’s dominance. Yankees pitchers enter the break with a 3.08 ERA, their lowest mark since 1976.
As for the trade deadline, Boone added, “You never know what’s going to happen.”
It remains to be seen if the Yankees will make a splash or hang on. The 1998 Yankees — a team often compared to this current group — failed to land Randy Johnson before this deadline. They still won 114 regular season games and the World Series.
Upgrades are always welcome and perhaps expected when a team is in serious competition. But Boone also likes the guys he has right now.
“The confidence that this team has that we can win either way,” he said when asked what stood out about the Yankees’ first half. “It really jumped out and it starts with the commitment the guys made from the first day of spring training to really be involved and obsess over the details and the smaller things in the game that have come up big for us at different times throughout the year.” And I think that gave us confidence that we could win every game by doing it in different ways.”
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