Watching the Aaron Boone-led New York Yankees is like watching someone make a sandwich with only some of the ingredients. This pains me because I really like sandwiches and I really like the Yankees. This particular sandwich has some delicious bread in Cam Schlittler and Gerrit Cole that holds everything together. They add some crisp turkey and scrumptious cheese in the form of Ben Rice, Paul Goldschmidt, and reliever Paul Blackburn. But the sandwich has no tomatoes. There’s no mayo. And they don’t add lettuce. When you bite into the sandwich, it’s still good, but it’s not what it could be. That is why Boone’s Yankees are the most maddening team in Major League Baseball. They simply aren’t what they could be, and a huge reason is him. 

Every season for the Yankees begins with championship expectations. They have a roster led by the best player in baseball (Yes, Aaron Judge is even better than Shohei Ohtani. I will be defending that position in a future post). They have quality pitching. They have some solid pieces around Judge in Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham, and Goldschmidt, who is remarkably still producing in his twilight years. 

Yet somehow, the same old issues keep rearing their ugly heads: poor managing, sloppiness with fundamentals, prolonged offensive slumps, and an uncanny ability to make games they are favored to win turn into unnecessarily-stressful affairs.

The problems start at the top. Boone shows no sense of urgency, and doesn’t hold players accountable. A couple of weeks ago his second baseman was sucking on a lollipop during the game! What does Boone do about it? He’s laughing it up with reporters! It’s unacceptable. Can you imagine a great coach like Bill Belichick laughing about a player eating candy during warmups? You think Vince Lombardi would be okay with Bart Starr sucking on a lollipop between plays?

The manager sets the tone. Boone’s carefree approach is reflected in the team’s performance on the field. He has mastered the art of looking unbothered while his team invents new ways to blow games. 

Every season under Boone’s watch, they go into their June Swoon Mode. The team will be rolling along, leading the division when they suddenly forget how to play. Ever seen Space Jam? It’s like the Monstars are stealing their talent. Fans have to suffer for weeks, watching hitters chase pitches way out of the strike zone and the infield commit numerous brainless plays. Just this week, José Caballero got behind in the count against the Pirates’ Carmen Mlodzinski with the bases loaded. His second strike? A pitch clock violation because he refuses to look at the pitcher with more than eight seconds on the clock as required by Major League Baseball. He then got into an argument with the umpire and ended up looking at a called strike three to end the inning. Every day, it’s something different. Every year, it’s the same word used to describe an airplane auguring in toward the deck below: nosedive.

Of course, the blame can’t be put solely on Boone. Players do have to perform. It doesn’t help that the bottom half of the roster is atrocious. The top part of the lineup card looks like it belongs in a pennant race. The bottom looks like Boone accidentally submitted the Scranton Railriders lineup card. “Triple “A”nthony Volpe is anemic. Austin Wells should never have been handed a starting role. It feels like a blessing from above any time Ryan McMahon gets on base (Good defender, though). They simply have too many guys who shouldn’t be starting on a team that has championship aspirations. 

What makes the Yankees especially frustrating isn’t that they lose, because even the best team is going to lose many games over the course of 162. It’s that they often lose in ways that are preventable. Just the other night, they loaded the bases against the Los Angeles Dodgers with no outs. But, they treated the opportunity like an inconvenience. They couldn’t bring a single run in. So many times they’ve lost due to a similar lack of ability to deliver in big spots. Two days prior, they had a chance to tie the game against the Dodgers, but Grisham jogged from first until he was almost halfway to third. He was thrown out at home plate. 

The only other candidate for Most Maddening Team is the New York Mets, with their bloated payroll and sub-.500 record, but I think the Yankees are even more maddening. Why? Because the Yankees always seem good enough to inspire hope but are just flawed enough to eventually crush it. The Mets, on the other hand, are just plain bad. 

Each season, the Yankees find a way out of the swoon, usually rattling off several wins in August and giving the fans hope that maybe the team has solved its woes. But then October comes and it seems like they once again forget how to play. It’s happened so often, it’s left pinstripe supporters wondering if they will ever break through. 

The Yankees were once the gold standard in baseball. They’ve since been replaced by the Dodgers. Perhaps the greatest source of frustration is that the Yankees are rarely bad enough to rebuild and rarely complete enough to dominate. They float through each season: good enough to make the playoffs, good enough to give their fans visions of a championship parade. But they inevitably crash -another example in the repetitive cycle of sky-high expectations followed by familiar disappointments.

They are the meal you are thoroughly expecting to enjoy, but that just doesn’t live up to the description on the menu. You want aged cheddar. You get sauerkraut. This makes Aaron Boone‘s Yankees sandwich beyond frustrating. They are the most maddening team in baseball.