Yankees manager Aaron Boone talks with Trent Grisham about Thursday's lackadaisical play
Trent Grisham didn’t hustle in to field a single on Thursday, then had it kick off his glove for an error on Thursday, July 4, 2024. Credit: Getty Images
In the past week and a half, with the Yankees in a freefall, Aaron Boone has had a conversation with two of his players about lackadaisical play.
The first was Gleyber Torres, who didn’t run out a grounder against the Mets on June 25 and then got a two-game “rest” to clear his mind.
The most recent was Trent Grisham, who committed an egregious error in the ninth inning of the Yankees’ 8-4 loss to the Reds on Thursday at Yankee Stadium.
(And even more recently than that, Boone had a conversation with Anthony Volpe about his apparent lack of hustle and failure to touch the plate before a tag was applied on an inning-ending double play on Friday, costing the Yankees a run in a game they lost in extra innings. Volpe may not have been lackadaisical, but there were few positives to be drawn from his actions.)
Grisham loafed after a single to center and fumbled it when it finally reached him. Jeimer Candelario took second once the ball got away from Grisham. The July 4 crowd let Grisham have it with a torrent of boos.
“Oh, yeah,” Boone said on Friday when asked if he had spoken to Grisham, who was in the lineup as the Yankees hosted the Red Sox. “Just understanding that — especially when you go through these things — it’s a bad look.
“But at the same time, one of the reasons he’s a Gold Glove centerfielder is because of his heartbeat, the reads, the jumps, the ease with which he plays the position. So you don’t want to lose that in there. But with that, just be mindful of certain routine things.”
Boone uses the same defense when the criticism is about Torres’ defense — that Torres and Grisham play the game with such “ease” that they are subject to a different level of scrutiny when they make an error that looks as if it’s from a lack of effort.
“Look, if Grish makes a mistake in the field or Gleyber makes a mistake in the field, the way they play the game, it’s not going to have a good look to it,” Boone said to a reporter. “It’s not going to look like you and me playing softball. We’re going to take it off the chest and off the chin, but we suck.
“I was being respectful. So what I’m saying is, I try not to be so emotional because we’ve lost some games or won some games. It all matters. I’m taking it in and I have the conversations I think are necessary. But that’s the reality. Some guys look the fundamentally sound that everyone wants to see and you can live with that guy if he makes a mistake.”
Grisham, who went into Friday batting .165, is getting more playing time with Giancarlo Stanton on the injured list and Aaron Judge being used as the designated hitter.
“I just played back on it as opposed to coming to get it,’’ Grisham said after the game, according to the New York Post. “I just made a mistake. It’s frustrating in that situation.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
