It’s a long flight, so your mind wanders anyway when you’ve got 5 ½ hours until you have to fasten your seat belts, make sure you raise your tray tables and ensure your seat backs are in the upright and locked position.
Feels longer down 0-2 in the World Series, too.
“I considered a couple things on the long flight home,” Boone said Monday afternoon, three hours or so before the first pitch of Game 3 of the 120th World Series at Yankee Stadium. “But this is what I settled on.”
What he settled on was switching out rookie catcher Austin Wells — 1-for-8 with three strikeouts so far in the Series, 11-for-41 with 18 strikeouts in the playoffs — and replacing him with Jose Trevino. It meant sending another right-handed hitter up to the plate to face righty Walker Buehler, but it felt like a choice Boone had to make.
So he made it.
There were plenty of Yankees fans who, helpfully, might have suggested a few other things. The way Aaron Judge has struggled, there was plenty of voice lent to switching him and Soto in the lineup. The way Alex Verdugo has struggled for months — but especially in the playoffs: .184/.262/.237, which adds up to an uber-anemic .499 OPS — there are plenty who wouldn’t have minded giving Jasson Dominguez a start.
We can assume these things and other questions — who’s on first? What if I toss Trent Grisham into the mix? Or Oswaldo Cabrera? — swirled through Boone’s mind as he threw back some pretzel sticks and sipped from his Diet Coke. But the only ones worth thinking about were Dominguez (because Verdugo has been so punchless) and swapping Judge and Soto.
In regards to the first, Boone said: “I mean, not right now, but it’s the playoffs. You never know moving forward. He’s not in there tonight but always ready to go.”
And as for the latter: “It’s the World Series, no. That’s our guy (Judge), and there’s pressure in the Series, whatever spot you’re hitting. He’s our guy and [I’m] confident he’ll get it going.”
And here’s the thing:
It’s impossible to argue with either of those things. It actually would have been easy to understand if Boone had decided to stick with Wells, too, despite his struggles: lefty against righty, for starters, but with Trevino going you also open yourself up to the Dodgers getting friskier on the basepaths than they were with Wells (although seeing what happened to Shohei Ohtani when HE tried to steal in Game 2, the Dodgers might be of a mood to dial that back anyway).
Dominguez? Terrific prospect. A doubtless stalwart in the Yankees order going forward. But it’s probably worth pointing out that he only hit .179 in 56 big league at-bats, and that his OPS (.617) in the regular season isn’t all that much higher than Verdugo’s in the playoffs. Plus, for all of his struggles, Verdugo has played a good left field.
The Judge/Soto thing is even more understandable. For most of the season, they were the most feared 1-2 punch in the sport (and even with Judge’s struggles, it remains an imposing challenge, especially when Gleyber Torres gets on base leading off a game, which he’s done more often than not).
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Yankees’ season ends in heartbreak as they choke away Game 5 of World Series
- Aaron Judge’s crucial mistake erased breakout World Series moment
- Yankees’ Austin Wells hit with catcher’s interference call in brutal World Series moment
- Juan Soto’s season ends with million-dollar questions with Yankees future now murky
Soto’s genius for getting on base means Judge is going to keep getting opportunities. And at some point, he’ll take advantage of that.
There is also this baseball truth:
Just as the ball will always find you if you’ve got a weak glove, or if you’re playing out of position, the moment always finds you, too. That would be true if Judge were leading off, hitting cleanup or batting eighth, which is the place Joe Torre once tried to fix a struggling Alex Rodriguez. That’s just the way the sport is. It’s the way things go.
And also: you want the moment to find your best player. And Judge, for whatever’s happened in 11 October games until now, still wears that title and bears that burden.
Boone said it: “He’s our guy.”
Boone could’ve channeled a few old Billy Martin tricks. He could’ve thrown nine names in Jazz Chisholm’s cap and picked a batting order that way. He could’ve shock-benched Judge for a game, like Martin did to Reggie in ALCS Game 5 in ’77. Both would’ve been silly and totally out of character. Maybe this isn’t a shaken-up lineup. But if it was stirred to scoring a few extra runs, it’ll work out just fine.
