Aaron Boone is set to return for a 10th year running the New York Yankees, and after the season he just put together, that decision makes plenty of sense.
The Yankees won 93 games in 2026 despite a roster battered by injuries, then fell to the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Division Series. Boone should at least be part of the American League Manager of the Year conversation after steering a club through a brutal year on the injury front and still keeping it in the hunt.
The list of absences was long and costly. Eighteen players combined for 24 trips to the injured list.
It began with Aaron Judge, who missed 93 games because of a fractured right rib and right calf strain. Giancarlo Stanton was out for 135 games with calf injuries.
The rotation took hits too. Cam Schlittler gave the staff a steady anchor, but four other starters - Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodon and Clark Schmidt - all spent time on the IL.
With so many established names unavailable or underperforming, Boone leaned on a younger group. Ben Rice emerged as New York’s top hitter, setting a career high with 41 home runs. George Lombard Jr. and Spencer Jones also logged major playing time after the All-Star Break.
Anthony Volpe found more comfort moving around the infield than he had at shortstop, and he delivered in big spots, going 17-for-51 (.333) with runners in scoring position. On the mound, right-hander Will Warren spent most of the season in the rotation and finished second on the team in wins behind Schlittler with 11.
Boone also got important innings from Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn, John Schreiber and Ryan Yarbrough before closer David Bednar eventually took over the ninth inning. Blackburn may have been the most effective of the bunch, going 7-0 with a 1.59 ERA in 62 games.
Boone’s overall body of work with New York is hard to ignore. He has won 790 games with the Yankees, taken them to the postseason eight times in the last nine seasons and reached the World Series in 2024, where they lost to the Dodgers in five games.
Before 2026, Boone drew plenty of criticism for never winning a World Series title with the Yankees and for the team’s heavy reliance on analytics. This season asked for something different. The roster was flawed, and there were stretches when small ball had to be part of the plan because New York ranked 26th in the majors in hitting and sixth in strikeouts.
Defensively, the Yankees sat around the middle of the pack in defensive runs saved. But the gloves let them down in the ALDS, especially in Game 2, when three errors in the first inning helped sink them in a 5-2 loss and left them in a 2-0 series hole.
"Look, obviously we dealt with a lot of adversity throughout the year … from the injury front, but guys stepped up all year, and we were able to win a lot of games and give ourselves an opportunity and then just came up short," Boone said after the Yankees were eliminated from postseason play.
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