As shared by Garrett Stepien of SNY, New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone insisted following Sunday's 6-4 home loss to the Tampa Bay Rays that his club is "better than" what it has shown amid its summer swoon.
During a Monday morning chat with WFAN radio hosts Brandon Tierney and Sal Licata, former Yankees star pitcher David Wells discussed Boone's alleged "buddy-buddy" relationships with Yankees players such as captain Aaron Judge.
"They’re getting paid so much money, I don’t think they care, to be honest with you," Wells said of modern ballplayers, per Ryan Chichester of Audacy.
Wells then recalled a time when former skipper Joe Torre wasn't afraid to give Yankees legends such as Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams a piece of his mind early into a campaign.
"In 1998, we lost three of the first four games of the year, and Joe Torre was p-----," Wells explained. "He came in and laid it on the line. That’s what you want a manager to do. He called everybody out. He called Jeter out, he called Bernie out…and this was the first 3-4 games of the season. Whatever Joe said, it resonated with everybody. We came together as a team."
The '98 Yankees ultimately swept the San Diego Padres to win the World Series.
As for Boone, he guided the Yankees to the playoffs each year from 2018-22 but is also seen by some as a reason the franchise hasn't played in a World Series since it won the 2009 Fall Classic. His 59-42 club limped into the All-Star break, lost two of three games to Tampa Bay to begin the second half of the season and went into Monday's series finale versus the Rays trailing the first-place Baltimore Orioles (60-39) by two games in the American League East standings.
"If we would get in slumps," Wells continued, "we would talk about it. We would sit in the clubhouse after the game, we’d go out to dinner as a team…and we would talk about the game and how we can get better. These guys don’t do it. They have their headphones on, they play video games, they watch film, film and film."
Somewhat interestingly, shortstop Francisco Lindor recently credited team dinners on road trips for helping the New York Mets turn their season around. Boone seemingly isn't going to follow in Torre's footsteps this summer, so Yankees leaders such as Judge may need to bring the clubhouse together to get the Bronx Bombers out of their funk regardless of what team senior vice president and general manager Brian Cashman does before the July 30 trade deadline.
