Yankees’ Aaron Boone snaps at media after legitimate question about sinking team

DENVER — Yankees manager Aaron Boone wasn’t in a mood to be asked a tough, big-picture question about his once-again sputtering ball club, so he vented during his short postgame press conference on Sunday.

Sitting behind his desk in the visiting manager’s office at Coors Field, facing a YES Network cameraman and nearly A dozen reporters in his personal space, Boone tried to remain calm when asked if he considers the Yankees a championship-caliber team.

The Yankees’ excruciating 8-7, 11-inning loss to the Rockies was still fresh in mind.

“It’s baseball,” Boone said with agitation in his voice. “Major League Baseball. Save it with that question. We’ve got two and a half months to put ourselves in a position to be championship caliber.

“It’s on us. We’ve got to go prove that.”

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Year after year, again and again, Boone has been saying the Yankees are built to win a World Series since he replaced Joe Girardi after the 2017 season.

Boone’s still saying that.

That’s GM Brian Cashman’s belief, as well.

Also Hal Steinbrenner’s. The Yankees owner said so again recently.

Does Boone really believe it, or is he now just saying it because he doesn’t want his players to think he’s doubting their ability?

The Yankees, who are 50-44 with 68 games to go, just lost a series to the National League’s worst team. Sunday’s defeat couldn’t have been any more brutal.

The Bombers blew a two-run lead in the eighth when C.J. Cron crushed a grand slam off Clay Holmes, then wasted another two-run lead in the 11th when Nick Ramirez surrendered a game-tying homer to Nolan Jones. Ron Marinaccio sealed the Yankees’ fate by serving up a walk-off dinger to Alan Trejo.

Ever heard of those Rockies’ Sunday heroes?

“It’s just one of those games where you feel like everybody comes in here and asks themselves, ‘What could I have done better just to push it that extra inch over the line?’” Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole said after a one-run, six-inning, 11-strikeout no-decision. “We’re asking ourselves that question quite a bit. Sooner or later, we’re going to figure out what it’s going to take to break through.”

Maybe, maybe not.

Still, the Sunday choke was a terrible way to begin the second half of the season.

A week earlier, the Yankees slumped into the All-Star break by dropping two of three at home to the Cubs, another under-performing NL club. Before that, the Yankees lost a series to the NL Central’s last-place Cardinals, and split four games with the Orioles, who are second in the AL East, eight games ahead of Boone’s crew.

The Yankees are contending for a wild card, but tied for last in the division with the Red Sox.

Cole was made aware of his club’s predicament after his wasted gem. He thought for a moment before responding.

“It’s quite a picture you paint,” Cole finally said. “Look, this is a tough league and it’s a really tough division. Don’t forget to mention that every (AL East) team is maybe five, six, seven games over .500 at the very least.

“There’s a lot of tough baseball out there and when you’re sitting there looking at the situation, as a player you’ve just got to get back to grinding the axe. Get in there and do your work and try to get better every single day. There’s a lot of baseball to play in front of us and there’s a lot of good things that could potentially happen.”

Potentially, yes.

Aaron Judge will likely be activated from the injured list by early-to-mid August. Cashman will probably acquire a bat before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, maybe former MVP Cody Bellinger. And at some point, you’d think Anthony Rizzo will start hitting home runs again. He belted 11 through May 20, but none in the last 41 games.

Nevertheless, Rizzo insists Sunday’s loss, devastating as it seemed, will have no effect on team morale. His plan was to flush the weekend series and focus on playing better this week against the Angels and Royals.

It sounds like a good plan. But the Yankees have been saying the same thing all season. It’s a refrain they’ve used too often in 2023 after winning the East in ‘22.

This weekend will be erased by Monday morning, Rizzo believes, because “it’s what we do for a living. If we just want to put our heads down and feel bad for ourselves, that’s never a key for success.”

The Yankees know what the key to success is:

Play better more consistently, which is easier said than done. The Yankees have a lot of big names who are making big money, but many are in the midst of disappointing seasons: Luis Severino, DJ LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson, Jose Trevino and Rizzo.

Still, this Yankees’ club that is underachieving is not a bad team, Rizzo insists.

“Bad teams are about 15 games under .500 now,” he said.

But good teams withstand losing their best player for a third of the season better than the Yankees have.

“We know we need to string together some good baseball, put some wins together,” Holmes said. “I think that we believe that we’re capable. It’s not like there’s not that belief, but at the same time we understand that it needs to happen. One way or another, we’ve got to start figuring it out.”

The Yankees have 2 ½ months to figure it out. If they can get to the playoffs for the seventh year in a row, they could conceivably go on a run like the wild-card Phillies did last October. They ignited at just the right time, and magically found themselves in the World Series.

“I think that the bottom line is we know we’re capable,” Holmes said. “We have the pitchers we need and we have the hitters. It’s just a matter of starting to put together one good inning at a time and stringing together those wins.

“Times like these, you’ve really got to simplify things and try to win one inning, win one game. That’s where our heads are at.”

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Randy Miller may be reached at rmiller@njadvancemedia.com.