After not bringing Joe Girardi back following the 2017 season, when the Yankees lost Game 7 of the ALCS to the Astros, the club turned to a person who had never managed a game at any level.
This past October, the Yankees dismissed veteran pitching coach Larry Rothschild with a year remaining on his contract and replaced him with somebody who has never been in a big-league dugout.
The Yankees would certainly take from Matt Blake, the new pitching coach, what they got from manager Aaron Boone, who has won 203 games in two years — including the 2019 AL East title — and came within a game of getting to the World Series this past season.
All eyes were already going to be on the 34-year-old Blake, who comes from an analytical background and worked in the Indians minor league system as a pitching coordinator and assistant director of pitching development. That was before the Yankees signed Gerrit Cole to a record-setting, nine-year deal for $324 million that could balloon to 10 years for $360 million if Cole opts out after five years and the Yankees void the opt out and extend the contract to another year at $36 million.
Boone doesn’t believe he needs to dole out advice…
Read “Gerrit Cole question shows how large Matt Blake’s Yankees task is” at New York Post