For Yankees, analytics a useful resource, but how much is too much?

The New World Order Yankees T-shirts began to be seen regularly a number of years ago on the grounds of the minor league complex in Tampa.

It wasn’t the starting point of the “us vs. them” dynamic that persists inside the organization to this day when it comes to the club’s influential analytics department and those outside it, pro scouting, to name one example.

But it was symbolic.

On the surface, “New World Order” was an innocuous string of words open to interpretation. But the message was clear from many of those wearing them: We’ve arrived, we’re the show, get on board – all-in – or get out of the way.

All things analytics, performance science, etc. were here to stay.

An obligatory interjection:

As has been written repeatedly here on the topic as it relates to the Yankees: This is not anti-analytics or anti-sports and performance science. All teams use those things to varying degrees and any organization in 2023 dismissing them as useless is an organization guilty of dereliction of duty. Not using any and all information available is a recipe for failure.

So is overkill.

One example: Before every trip, the Yankees traveling party receive a “sleep guide,” complete with a suggested “bedtime” and “time to wake up.”

And that kind of smothering from the performance science crowd contributed at least in part to a much-derided decision on the just-completed trip West. The decision: Rather than the usual step of flying home after the conclusion of Wednesday’s game, which started at 4 p.m. Pacific time, they would wait until around noon Thursday (complete with an inconvenient hotel change Wednesday night) to depart.

The thought, not without merit, being players should get a better night’s sleep in a hotel instead of maybe a few uncomfortable hours on a red-eye that might not see them get to their respective homes until anywhere from 4-6 a.m.

Except … overwhelmingly, with some exceptions, most simply wanted to get home ASAP.

So  a significant number of the traveling party, players included, spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning exploring other options back to New York in the hopes of spending their off-day at home instead of the long wait for Thursday’s flight that, in the words of one player, “just completely kills the off day” because of the combination of losing time going back East and five-plus hours in the air.

“A day of travel,” said another member of the traveling party, “really isn’t an off day.”

There’s this as well: as one executive who works on the analytic side of things with one NL club told Newsday recently when it comes to analysts: “Pretty sure I told you this (before), just because you went to MIT, Yale, Harvard, wherever, we’re not all one in the same. Some of us really are better at this (expletive) than others.”

And when it comes to the Yankees analytics department specifically, organizationally a deep resentment has been bubbling under the surface behind the scenes for a while now regarding this dynamic: the almost absolute power wielded by the group – from the minor leagues on up – and the absolute lack of public accountability for mistakes (another interjection: there have been plenty of successes, too).  

The Yankees, skidding badly without Aaron Judge at 50-47 and in last place in the American League East, over the All-Star break fired hitting coach Dillon Lawson, the club’s minor league hitting coordinator from 2018-21. He was entirely a product of the department, which pushed him up the ladder and ultimately into the hitting coach job when Marcus Thames, highly respected and well-liked in the clubhouse, was let go after the 2021 season (Thames is now the Angels hitting coach).

The hiring of the outgoing Sean Casey, who spent 12 years in the majors, clearly was not at the behest of a department that has members at best indifferent to big-league playing and/or coaching experience and, at worst, condescending toward it and those who have it.

Active players, as you might guess, have a different perspective and, make no mistake, there was great desire from them for someone who had complete understanding, and empathy, of the difficulty of standing in a big-league batter’s box.

Though internally there has been some cautious optimism Casey’s hiring might indicate a change, even a slight one, in organizational philosophy, those conclusions cannot yet be drawn from a move born of desperation more than anything.  

The organization’s road here, of course, has been overseen by managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman, both of whom annually take great pains to discuss the “balance” they believe exists between analytics and everything else. They are in the minority, inside the organization and outside it, who believe balance truly exists.

The 2023 season, though in Aaron Boone’s words, at “a low point” after this just-concluded 1-5 road trip, is salvageable. Much of that rests on how impactful Judge will be upon returning, and slumping veterans such as DJ LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo playing to the back of their baseball cards.

What if the season continues as is and the Yankees miss the playoffs?

Then it will be up to Steinbrenner to ask some hard questions that have been a long time coming.

And the answers can’t be more game-day meetings, more Stadium “war rooms,” more of a New World Order that too often acts as if it’s won a lot more than it has.