A look at the scouting vs. analytics debate surrounding the Yankees
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman looks on during batting practice prior to the first inning against the Blue Jays June 16 in Buffalo. Credit: AP/Jeffrey T. Barnes
The one moment during his nearly 30-minute zoom meeting with reporters on July 1 that Hal Steinbrenner seemed briefly taken aback was upon hearing a question about the Yankees’ use of analytics vs. traditional scouting.
What momentarily threw Steinbrenner was the premise of the question, which essentially suggested the Yankees, when it comes to pretty much every baseball decision, had all but abandoned the opinions of their pro scouts in favor of those in the analytics and data science departments.
"That is surprising to hear," he said.
Steinbrenner should not have been surprised.
Among the worst kept secrets in the sport in recent years has been the gradual erosion of the influence in the Yankees’ organization of scouts – whom Steinbrenner called "our boots on the ground" – when it comes to decision making as it relates to players.
It would be incorrect to say scouts have zero influence, but it would be equally inaccurate to intimate they have anything close to the influence they once did when it comes to the calls made by GM Brian Cashman.
"They’re pretty much all analytics now," one rival AL executive said in a just-the-facts tone and not a judgmental one. "Been moving that direction (for a while)."
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but what it has done is create, in the words of one organizational insider, a pronounced "us vs. them" mentality that has been percolating under the surface for years behind the scenes. That is not atypical in the sport overall when it comes to the tired-but-fully-in-its-second-decade argument of the use of data vs. eyes-on-the-player scouting.
But it has become more pronounced this season within the Yankees as the club, to this point, hasn’t come close to reaching the expectations they left spring training with.
And so two storylines will unfold simultaneously in the season’s second half for the franchise, which has not won, or qualified for, a World Series since 2009: there is the intrigue of whether the Yankees, who are tied for third in the AL East and trail Boston by eight games but play the Red Sox eight times in 11 days after the break, can successfully mount a charge for a postseason bid.
But that will play out against the palace intrigue occurring in the background when it comes to those holding the most sway when it comes to influencing the decisions.
Those believing the Yankees should scrap an all-in approach to analytics, performance science, etc. miss a significant, yet simple, point: no franchise with aspirations of long-term success operates without utilizing all of the information available to it. Period.
But, as an executive with one NL club’s analytics department put it bluntly: "Some of us are better at it than others."
He continued: "Look, it’s our job to make sure everyone is on board and you don’t do that by calling people stupid. You hear that from (so many teams). It’s our job to make sure all of that (data) is filtered to everyone – players and staff most importantly – and presented in some manner other than ‘You’re a dinosaur and old-school and don’t understand how smart I am so just do it.’"
Is this an area in which the Yankees are failing?
Winning, of course, masks all, so the Yankees going, say 20-5 out of the break – and they have the talent to do it – will shove much of this to the background.
But not entirely.
Decisions on coaches, staff and, naturally, players will be made after this season, regardless of how it ends, and the organization will roll out its plans for 2022, 2023, 2024 and on and on.
But the most significant decision it may well face is determining whether it continues full-speed ahead philosophically as is, or does it pause and ask itself some hard questions.
In some ways, evaluating the futures of the players, coaches and staff beyond 2021 will be the easy part.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
