Bleeding Yankee Blue: NO EXPERIENCE, NO PROBLEM

Sunday, December 3, 2017

NO EXPERIENCE, NO PROBLEM

Source: Allen Kee/ESPN Images

I have received tons of comments about the Aaron Boone appointment but the one that grabbed a hold of me the most is the one a school colleague in-boxed me last night. "Experience needs to matter, and he has no managerial experience. That really irks me. It's the Yanks for goodness sake. In 2017 experience no longer matters is a societal problem." I couldn't agree more. By the way, he is a Phillies fan. And here's my take: Just because you analyzed baseball and you played baseball and you hit a notorious home run against the Yankees' arch enemy, doesn't mean you can manage a major league team.

Source: CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

"Everyone in the game respects Aaron Boone because of the way he played the game, and the way he goes about his life, being a great husband and father of four, including adopted brothers from Haiti, treating people right, and never putting himself above anyone else," penned Tim Kurkjian
ESPN Senior Writer. I believe he is a great guy and even a self-less guy. But does he have what it takes to manage the most decorated team in baseball history if he has never managed before?

Source: SI.com

As the New York Daily News reported, "It is a gamble for Cashman and Co. as Boone has never taken on this type of endeavor before. Granted, during his teleconference with reporters following his interview, he said, “I would say in a way I’ve been preparing for this job for the last 44 years.” I get that. I think we all have lofty goals that have been part of our preparation for that "dream job." But as my colleague said in the opening quote of this piece, "Experience needs to matter." To rebut that concept, the NY Post printed, "Boone had been using his role as an ESPN analyst as something akin to a Ph.D. program in modern baseball." Ph.D. program in modern baseball? That's a bit of a stretch.

Source: Getty Images

If we go with the Ph.D program thing then riddle me this: Why not hire Boone as a bench coach and promote one of the current bench coaches to manager? Why not Rob Thomson or Tony Pena? Quite frankly, Yankees team executive and former Red Sox Tim Naehring played with Pena back in the early 90s. I interviewed Pena during that time as well and thought very highly of him as a player. What makes Boone more qualified than Pena or Thomson for that matter?

Source: YES Network

And what are we saying to society by hiring Boone? You can get hired for a premiere job and impress management even if you don't have the experience needed to execute the key objectives of the job? I hope I eat my words and Boone proves to be effective in his role as manager. But right now, I'm stuck on the words "No Experience, No Problem." And for that matter, I do have a problem with the team's decision to hire Boone as the new manager for the 2018 Yankee team.