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Is Aaron Boone the one to blame for the Yankees loss to the Dodgers?
Gerrit Cole should have at least tried to cover first base in the fifth inning of game five of the recently completed 2024 World Series. Even if he felt Mookie Betts was going to beat him to first base, he still should have made the effort. He famously — or infamously, did not. But why can’t it also be true that first-baseman Anthony Rizzo (a four-time Gold Glove winner), waited back too long, and could have charged the slow little roller up the first base line. As one pundit noted, tricky and famous slow rollers up the first baseline in New York World Series games hit by a guy named Mookie is kind of a thing.
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Yankees fans blame Cole a little more than Rizzo but there is lots of blame to go around when a catastrophic inning occurs at a critical moment of a pivotal World Series game. Yankee manager Aaron Boone is also squarely in focus when it comes to the blame game. The Yankees were a below-average defensive team all season. MVP winner-to-be Aaron Judge gamely played out-of-position in center field for the good of the team, but he didn’t play it all that well. He’s really a right fielder. The parade of miscues made by the Yankees in the fifth inning felt like a team collapse after Judge’s miscue when 2023 Gold…
