7 moves the Yankees must make after embarrassing playoff exit

3. Front Office Needs to Stop Making Decisions for Aaron Boone, or Needs to Fire Him

The Yankees need to chill on the analytics.

The New York Yankees are not the Oakland Athletics or Tampa Bay Rays. They aren’t working with a dollar-store budget, having to make ends meet with bottom-of-the-barrel talent. They’re not constantly searching for diamonds in the rough or are required to use a heavy dose of analytics to beat the behemoths of Major League Baseball.

They are the behemoths. Do you think for a second that the Game 2 pitching plan was Boone’s doing? Absolutely not. That was likely heavily influenced by the front office in an attempt to take advantage of “matchups” after analyzing spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Well guess what? We don’t need a computer to tell us JA Happ is bad, or that playoff baseball is very different than regular season baseball, or that weak 92 MPH fastballs are very hittable.

Leave the managing to the manager. If you feel Boone isn’t capable of managing in that capacity, then get rid of him. The New York Yankees manager shouldn’t be a puppet in any regard. And the Yankees shouldn’t be dictated largely by analytics. It’s very clear this organization values on-base percentage more than batting average, which has proven to be a colossal detriment to the offense’s success. A mix of all of these aspects is required to create a balance and avoid heavy hitting droughts. Cashman and Co. seemingly still haven’t figured that out for over four years now.

Let’s pump the brakes on the analytics, please. They, without a doubt, have a place in the game, but not to the point where they’re dictating an overwhelming amount of your biggest decisions.