Hot seats already here for last year's biggest Yankees splashes

They entered 2018 as the Yankees’ two largest risks.

They departed, arguably, with their status unchanged.

Will Aaron Boone and Giancarlo Stanton prove better or worse for the wear? It only could determine their team’s 2019 fortunes.

Neither the Yankees’ rookie manager nor their imported slugger distinguished himself, to say the least, in the team’s brief postseason run, Boone and Stanton’s maiden October voyages in their respective positions.

Boone’s lack of urgency in changing pitchers, most notably ALDS Game 3 and 4 starters Luis Severino and CC Sabathia, hurt the Yankees considerably as they fell to the rival Red Sox in four games, the finale occurring Tuesday night at, painfully, Yankee Stadium.

And Stanton’s underwhelming ALDS slash line of .222/.222/.222 served as an unwanted tribute to Marlins president Derek Jeter, the man who dealt him to the Yankees.

The results created disappointment and worse among Yankees Universe. Though — let’s pivot to the forward-looking part of the column — they couldn’t have truly created surprise, could they?

Boone walked into this job, succeeding the highly successful Joe Girardi, rawer than a filet mignon served before the discovery of fire. Of all the fresh skippers hired last winter, a group featuring the Mets’ Mickey Callaway, the Red Sox’s Alex Cora, the Phillies’ Gabe Kapler and the Nationals’ Dave Martinez, only Boone carried a résumé with zero baseball-operations experience beyond playing.

His best attribute appeared to be his grace under pressure, the very area that Girardi never mastered. It helped the Yankees weather their standard storms, most notably when they won three of four in Tampa Bay during the regular season’s final week to lock down home-field advantage in the AL wild-card game. Yet, does anyone dispute that Girardi would not have let ALDS Games 3 and 4 get away from him as they did Boone?

The Yankees’ decision to pair up the novice Boone with an inexperienced bench coach, Boone’s former Indians teammate Josh Bard, loomed large this week, especially after Boone spoke Tuesday afternoon about the lessons he learned from Game 3, only to repeat the mistake that night in Game 4.

Room for growth obviously exists, and it obviously is not guaranteed. A year in, Boone clearly trails the dynamic Cora in his freshman class.

Then there’s Stanton, who didn’t underachieve in 2018 as much as remind us of his reality: While he’s a terrific talent who provides real value, he doesn’t consistently produce Hall of Fame numbers despite his Hall of Fame contract.

Consider that the 3.4 offensive wins above replacement he put up for the Yankees this season, as per Baseball-Reference.com, put him on par with the Marlins’ Starlin Castro, one of the players the Yankees traded for him, and five other players; they tied for 51st in the majors in this category. And that value ranked smack in the middle — four years better, four years worse — for Stanton’s career.

Personality-wise, he proved a pleasant surprise — low-maintenance and cheery — and some of his best hitting came as Aaron Judge healed his fractured right wrist on the disabled list. He hit poorly in the final month of the regular season, though, and that carried into the postseason. Can the Yankees really feel wonderful about the $240 million over nine years they have left with him?

The Yankees’ 102 overall wins, fantastic on the surface, have to be placed in the context of their contemporaries: That result ranked them third in the AL, and they had to bust it through Game 160 to ward off the pesky A’s. The diagnostics go beyond, “They just had a bad week in October.”

Unless Bryce Harper or Manny Machado walk through that George M. Steinbrenner Field door, however, Boone and Stanton will report to Tampa as top-level question marks — risks, even — once again. As much went right for the Yankees this year, their manager and highest-paid player clocking out with such doubts puts the Hot Stove onus on ownership and the front office to turn those doubts, somehow, into certainties.

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