Aaron Boone’s 2027 season is already getting complicated, and the timing couldn’t be worse.
The Yankees went into the offseason expecting to keep most of their major-league coaching staff intact around Boone, who is entering a lame-duck year without an extension in 2027. Instead, the coaching market has started to chip away at New York’s group, and the team now has to sort through multiple vacancies with a lockout looming on December 1st.
That deadline has changed the feel of the entire November coaching carousel. Across baseball, clubs have been hesitant to make sweeping staff moves because a prolonged lockout could leave new coaches unable to work with players for an extended stretch. With the possibility of a delayed spring training hanging over everything, the usual offseason churn has been slower than normal.
For the Yankees, the first hit came on November 5, when Triple-A manager Shelley Duncan was hired to Don Mattingly’s major-league staff in Philadelphia. The bigger blow, though, came when the Seattle Mariners hired Director of Catching Tanner Swanson as their new bench coach.
Swanson, a Seattle native, had built a strong reputation in the Bronx over seven seasons for his work developing defense behind the plate. More than a dozen major-league catchers have passed through the Yankees’ system during his time there, and his biggest success may have been helping turn Austin Wells from a player without a future at catcher into a Gold Glove finalist.
The Yankees did manage to keep Matt Blake as pitching coach, which was an important win for Boone. But losing Swanson still leaves a real void in the dugout.
Brian Cashman said Tuesday that Run Prevention and Catching Coordinator Aaron Gershenfeld would be promoted to replace Swanson, so at least one hole has already been filled. The bigger issue is what happens next.
On Wednesday morning, the Yankees lost two more coaches. Bench coach Brad Ausmus was hired as manager of the Houston Astros, and hitting coach James Rowson was hired as offensive coordinator of the San Francisco Giants after New York decided not to retain him.
Rowson’s exit had been expected, but losing him and Ausmus together creates a much bigger problem. It also opens the door for the Yankees to reshape the staff, and there are plenty of directions they could go.
Former Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates is one possible name. So is a move toward one of the more data-driven organizations if the Yankees want more buy-in on offense.
For the bench coach opening, they could also lean on experience, with former Astros manager and Yankees coach Joe Espada among the possibilities.
The catch is the calendar. By the time those hires are made, there may be less than two weeks left before the lockout.
Once that happens, the new coaches won’t be able to communicate with players until the stoppage ends, which could be deep into next spring. That would leave very little time to get everyone on the same page before games start counting.
That matters most with the hitting coach spot, especially if the next hire brings a different approach than Rowson did. The Yankees still have incumbent assistants in place, which should help, but any shift in philosophy could be harder to lock in during a lockout. That creates real risk of offensive growing pains.
And after last season, Boone doesn’t have much room for that. The Yankees need answers quickly, and the manager is being asked to navigate what could be the most important year of his career while losing key people around him at the worst possible time.
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Cashmans comments land in the middle of a larger pattern the Yankees have struggled to shake, with past injury situations often handled cautiously or with delays that left fans and observers wanting clearer answers. For a team that has spent so much time managing absences from key players, the issue is not just who gets hurt, but how the club explains what is happening and when. The next step for the Yankees is not only getting healthier, but proving they can handle the communication side of the equation better than they did this season. [Read more 🡒]