Analytics: A Moment In Time
For full transparency purposes I am a Yankees fan. It really is the only NYC team I pull for, and that largely has to do with my Father. He was one; so I am one. After the Yankees I have more interest with Chicago sports. A city where I spent more time as a youth than anything in the southeast state of New York.
So with that being said I’ve been relatively quiet over these initial games of the season. April baseball, October hockey, unless its extremely bad, is nothing to get overly excited about. However, 16 games into the 2021 season, mired with 6 wins, there is a cause for concern with the Bronx Bombers, and the concern is only indirectly associated with the end product on the field. No, the real concern is the trend line, and the Yankees organizational trend line has been pointing in an ominous direction for some time. Specifically, April 7, 2012, the second game of the season against the Tampa Bay Rays when organizationally they decided to rest Jeter at short stop and penciled him in at DH. The thought process at the time was, with an aging superstar, it is best to rest him where you could. On the surface that makes total sense. In practicality purposes, not as much. Too much of a good thing for anyone is no good either. As an organizational decision they couldn’t wait maybe a week? Maybe 10 days? I wouldn’t debate about that. I get it. Analytics and statistical data proves that particularly as a player gets older the more rest the better.
In game 2 of 162? Yeah, I think that was taking things a bit too far. This was April not September. When the Yankees did that it marked the moment that they suddenly over analyzed what they were doing. They weren’t be progressive, but rather they became a slave to the number crunchers. They weren’t the trend setters having won 27 World Series. That day marks the point where organizationally they were able to interpret the data, but they were unable to apply the data to the current situation. Put Jeter in as a DH the following week? Sure if you want because your statistical analysis shows more rest the better. Do it in game 2? That’s a bridge too far. You’ve now become a slave to the statistics instead of the other way around. When that happened (dare I say it?) you became just another baseball franchise.
Since that moment in time there have been an endless parade of examples of how taking a good thing (I’m not an anti-analytics person) a bit too far. How much is too far? Well, that might be very subjective to each person that pours over the numbers, but the ultimate determining factor is the wins column. At the time of this writing the Yankees are sitting at 6-10, and it is really an indictment of the poor quality — not on the field, but in the front office. The field is only the end result of bad decision making that occurred much earlier.
This is what I think frustrates the Yankees nation the most. Most of us are seasoned. Most of us know baseball pretty well — we’ve followed it and the team for a very long time. We don’t go into panic mode because of April baseball. We know it is entirely possible to come back from 14.5 games back to win the pennant and the World Series. We get all that. What puts us in panic mode is what the problem is, and it has less to do with “a bunch of guys in a slump,” and more with it being an institutional problem. The problem isn’t even analytics. The problem is with those applying it.
Lastly, and this speaks more to the Yankees/Rays tête-à-tête, the Rays have a better analytics department then New York. That’s not saying the Rays have the best analytics department in baseball — that is going too far. From all of the encounters wherever the Rays rank in efficiency/accuracy in interpreting and applying what the data is giving them the Yankees are behind them. The Yankees know it too. That’s why @RealMichaelKay asked on Monday, “Why are you trying to out-Ray the Rays?” The answer is simple, they’re in competition with them — not on the field but in the front office, and they’ve been failing miserably. It doesn’t matter where they play them. New York? Tampa? A neutral site in the playoffs during the middle of a pandemic? It doesn’t matter. You, New York Yankees, don’t beat the Rays at their own game, and in every loss the inferiority complex deepens that much further. Stop trying to be something your not. Start trying to be the New York Yankees because if you continue down this path you’ll become just another baseball team.