THE BEST OF INTENTIONS
Manager stands by ordering walk that backfired
Aaron Boone won’t give the secondguessers a first thought.
The new Yankees manager has faced some early criticism after a few of his decisions in Toronto blew up in his face over the weekend. Most recently, intentionally walking Josh Donaldson in the eighth inning Sunday did not work out when Justin Smoak hit a grand slam off David Robertson to put the Blue Jays ahead in a 7-4 win.
That has led to some questions about Boone … already.
“I guess I don’t deal with the secondguessing,” Boone said. “I don’t pay attention to it. We’re prepared. My coaches and I are. We feel good about the decisions we make. We feel good about the decisions we have made. We review things. Not only do we go through things and talk about things and feel like we’re prepared as things come up during the course of a game, but also we try to self-evaluate and evaluate decisions that went right or wrong in the course of a game and kind of flush it out and talk through it. Through the first four games, I feel really good about the decisions we’ve had to make.”
Boone explained the decision by pointing to the history of the matchups. Donaldson was 3-for-8 with two home runs against Robertson. Smoak was 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.
“I won’t be a guy, not because of [Sunday], that intentionally walks people a lot,” Boone said. “I’m not a big believer in throwing extra guys on base, but there are important times in the game where I think you have a decision to make. There’s a lot of debate on that kind of decision yesterday. I understand. I felt like we made the best decision. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s sports and that’s baseball.”
Boone checked with Robertson from the dugout whether he agreed with the decision. Robertson gave a nod from the mound he thought walking Donaldson was the way to go.
“When it got to that point, we identified the matchup we preferred, and [pitching coach] Larry [Rothschild] and I were comfortable with that,” Boone said. “We just wanted to make sure and feel good about Robby feeling about that, too, and he did. That’s the way he wanted to go with it, too. They got us. They got us [Sunday]. I mean, Smoak’s a really good hitter. It’s going to happen. One more pitch and we’re out of that thing, and we get out of there in a little bit better shape.”
What if Robertson had said he wanted to pitch to Donaldson?
“I don’t know if it necessarily would have changed our mind. It could have impacted our decision,” Boone said. “It might have got us a visit. We might have sent [catcher Austin Romine] out there to buy a little time, or if Larry wanted to go have that conversation, we would have talked through that. But I think it just confirmed in our mind the matchup we preferred.”