Aaron Boone gives bizarre take about Yankees horrific infield defense

The New York Yankees have gotten off to an unbelievable start to kick off the 2024 campaign. Their 12-5 record is not only the best in the American League, but it's the best record in all of baseball. With several players including Gerrit Cole on the sidelines, they deserve a ton of credit for that.

While things have gone extremely well for New York, they've been far from perfect. Aaron Judge is still hitting under .200. Gleyber Torres has just a .538 OPS. The most glaring weakness that's come about has been their defense, particularly in the infield.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone doesn't seem to be all that concerned with their defense, and he has valid reasoning for that. His take on their defense now, though, can be described as bizarre at best.

Aaron Boone's take on state of Yankees infield defense is quite bizarre

There are two statements here. The second one can make sense. The first one does not.

Expecting this Yankees infield defense to be good has some validity to it, but saying it "already has been a strength" seems just wrong. Did we watch the same game on Sunday? That game is won with even average infield defense being played. That's just one game of many that have been issues.

The Yankees rank third in the majors entering play on Tuesday with 15 errors committed. 15 in 17 games! Each of their regular starting infielders has at least two errors and three of the four have three. Even Jon Berti has one and he's only started five games.

There's reason to believe things will get better. Anthony Rizzo is a four-time Gold Glover. Anthony Volpe won a Gold Glove last season in his rookie year. DJ LeMahieu hasn't played yet this season and is a four-time Gold Glover in his own right. The fact that it's going to get better doesn't mean it's good now, though.

Boone calls their infield defense a strength saying that they're in the top five in outs above average, but that's just not the case. New York enters play on Tuesday tied for 12th in infield OAA with 1 according to Baseball Savant. They're closer to the bottom half of the league than they are to the top five. It's important to look at OAA too and not just errors to get more of a complete picture, but even that suggests they've been mediocre. Recording one more out than average isn't anything to get all that excited about, especially when the errors have been such a glaring issue.

Again, it's early, but it has not been a strength. There's every reason to believe that it'll turn around, especially when LeMahieu comes back, but acting as if it's been fine, let alone been a strength, is just misleading.