Former All-Star has NSFW reaction to Brian Cashman's analytics claims

Of all Brian Cashman's screamed-out statements in the absurdist art piece that was his appearance at the GM Meetings, by far the oddest were his cocky claims about the Yankees' minuscule analytics department.

Why? Because no one can find any evidence they were true. In fact, the team's number of analytics staffers appears to be among the largest in the game, not the smallest in the east.

Newsday's Erik Boland produced a graph comparing the Yankees' analytics -- aka "Research and Development" -- staff log to the rest of the league from Aug. 27, which showed Cashman's crew to be larger than that of the Dodgers, second in baseball to the Rays (who we just can't catch!).

Press Cashman on it, and maybe he'll attempt to reclassify some of these staffers as part-time, or argue they belong in another department, or what have you. The reality, no matter what he claims, is that the Yankees are still heavily dedicated to finding and processing numbers -- and that's good! Now, they just have to get better at it.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman 'full of sh*t' on analytics, per Jason Kipnis (and others!)

In case you needed any additional confirmation that the Yankees haven't thrown analytics aside, calls are now coming from within the baseball fraternity. Add former All-Star Jason Kipnis to the mix, who hopped on the "Foul Territory" podcast to claim he smelled a rat, regardless of Boland's graph.

"Well, I didn’t need to see this graph to know that the statement was full of s----. I’m strictly going off of conversations with former teammates that have played for the Yankees or have gone through that place. And one of the main things they rave about is the analytical side of that organization — just how much information hitters have to their advantage. And so there’s just no chance that they were near the bottom.

I think maybe (Cashman) looks at it as it’s the smallest because he’s just delegated it to a few people and then kind of pushed it off his table and worried about some other stuff. Maybe it’s the smallest to him personally, but across the league, that makes absolutely no sense with all the advantages that the Yankees have had and the numbers and statistics that are presented to them — that never seemed like the case from a player’s standpoint."

- Jason Kipnis

Yes! In this instance, it's actually good he was full of crap considering, if the Yankees really had the smallest emphasis on analytics of all their competitors, they would be in a terrible place.

According to Aaron Judge, the Yankees have a communication issue, and need to be better at prioritizing the right information (and keeping it flowing). Modern baseball is a difficult dance. You need some coaches who operate on hunches, sure. But everyone needs to be educated, and GMs need to be ahead of the curve, or else they'll get run over by smarter breeds who take their targets.

It feels much better to believe the Yankees' staffers are hitting a wall rather than think the entire team is operating 15 years behind the curve. At least it's a people problem.