Chris Russo Says Aaron Boone Barely a Top-10 Manager, Reveals Yankees' Mistake

If Major League Baseball's postseason began today the New York Yankees would be in the American League field. That's the good news for pinstripe supporters. The bad is that they have to hang on to a one-game advantage for the final Wild Card spot for several weeks and their recent play has left a lot to be desired.

The spotlight is always brighter in New York and this year Aaron Boone is taking even more criticism than usual for failing, to this point, to capitalize on the golden opportunities his roster provides to sail into the playoffs without much stress.

Chris "Mad Dog" Russo joined The Show with Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman to talk hardball this week and the conversation drifted over to Boone. Thankfully, the legendary radio host had his list of top-10 MLB managers handy and ticked through them.

"Rank Boone as a manager," Russo said. "He's not better than Cora, he's not better than Bochy, he's not better than Francona, he's not better than Dave Roberts, he's not better than Luvello, he's not better than A.J. Hinch. He's probably not better than Counsell, although postseason's been spotty. How do the Yankees have a manager who's the eighth-best manager?"

"He is barely in the top 10," Russo said of Boone. "These are the New York Yankees."

It's unclear exactly how scientific this list of managers is upon review. Being in the top-10 would still put Boone in the top third of dugout generals in the league, so there is a bright side. And despite what a lot of people would have you believe, the Yankees are not guaranteed to get the absolute best person at every position even if they have a storied history.

Russo conceded that some might have Boone higher in the rankings, yet a lot of Yankees fans would happily put him lower if they had the time and energy to make their own list.

He also added that the Yankees could have pulled the trigger on Francona, who is leading a resurgent Cincinnati Reds team this year, during the offseason.

"Did the Yankees put a call in to see if Francona — ‘Hey, Terry, we had a bad World Series, our manager killed us in Game 1.’ He killed them in Game 1 guys, that was awful. And Francona ends up in Cincinnati. Everybody loves Boone and he’s not a bad manager, but he’s been there a long time with one World Series win and, in my opinion, seven or eight managers are better than he is."

The only thing about that is Francona was hired by the Reds last year on October 7 and the Yankees played baseball up until they lost Game 5 of the World Series the day before Halloween—so it would have been a pretty wild move to replace their manager mid-playoffs.