Yankees: Interview with NYY’s analytics leader won’t stop your worries

Let’s clear this up right off the top: analytics are not the problem with the New York Yankees. Analytics are not what’s wrong with Major League Baseball in general. Analytics, in fact, allow teams to maximize the talents of their rosters, helping to promote success from previous trouble spots.

That said, many are worried the Yankees have lost the plot, and Joel Sherman’s latest interview with Michael Fishman, the team’s assistant GM who runs the analytics department, will not quell those fears.

Most educated fans of the Yanks know that the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and, yes, the Boston Red Sox are all analytically-inclined teams that balance monster payrolls with the additional insight they’re given by crunching the numbers.

The Yankees, on the other hand, seem to have somehow missed something, and as cornball as it sounds, are neglecting the old-fashioned baseball elements of snap judgments and team chemistry.

Can chemistry and analytics coexist? Sure can in Boston.

They don’t seem to in New York, though, where a “three true outcomes” team was outsmarted by Major League Baseball changing the construction of the ball mid-flight.

The fear is that the Yankees don’t have the right people in place implementing analytical philosophies, or perhaps are not aligned within the organization, leading to many voices preaching many things while the team forgets to sign any lefties. Fishman’s interview will leave you worried the balance has tipped too far in one direction even though he claims it’s not.

Yankees assistant GM Michael Fishman’s analytics interview is a bummer.

Again, now that we’ve reached the middle portion of this story, allow us to remind you that analytics are good. Predictive analytics gave the Yankees Luke Voit and Gio Urshela. Many of the singles-guzzling shifts you’ve enjoyed the past few years came courtesy of analytical data.

However, it was disconcerting last year when no one was able to suss out that the Deivi Garcia/JA Happ switcheroo might not be the most prudent strategy in Game 2 of the ALDS, especially since Happ had no interest in participating (and perhaps Garcia didn’t either).

The ripest critique of analytics is that sometimes, an individual player will be so aggravated by his number-crunched role change that his performance will suffer. Listening to Fishman attempt to come up with an example of a time the team was able to make a recent decision without following the book’s recommendations entirely was the most difficult-to-read portion of this piece:

"But when I asked if he could provide examples of where analytics did not carry the day and scouting did, Fishman did not respond for 10 seconds, offered hesitating non-answers for about another 10 and then said that there are in-game decisions, for example, involving relievers that are not following analytic suggestions. He then added, “There is a lot of talk that analytics makes the lineups. Analytics does not make the lineups. Boone makes the lineups. All the information is provided to the coaches and the staff.”Fishman then said, “I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head. They are numerous. Every day there are decisions, some are analytic decisions, some are not.”"

There is nothing wrong with using analytics to determine a best course of action.

There is, however, something wrong with Aaron Boone, who seems reticent to implement the findings, perhaps scarred by last year’s postseason (after all, no analytics-minded person would ever tell you to bat Rougned Odor third).

There also might be something wrong with the voice in the room, too, who can’t discern a way out as the team underperforms in every respect in 2021.

Someone out there might have the solution (someone in Tampa?), but it doesn’t appear to be Fishman.

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