What to expect from Yankees internal audit: Im sure its going to be extensive

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s expected to be a mostly quiet week in the New York Yankees’ universe. As players clear out their lockers and check in with coaches at Yankee Stadium, team brass will convene at its player development complex in Tampa, Fla., to brainstorm and review what went wrong in a season that ended without a playoff berth, according to a pair of team sources who spoke to The Athletic on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

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The group will be preparing for when the outside company conducts a full review of the team’s baseball operations. The company, according to one source, has experience working with other Major League Baseball teams.

Vince Gennaro, the associate dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport at New York University, said that although owner Hal Steinbrenner’s Aug. 31 revelation that the Yankees were hiring a consulting firm sent shock waves through the fan base, the move isn’t “terribly unprecedented or unusual.” Gennaro pointed to when the Houston Astros employed McKinsey & Company to review their scouting and research and development departments in 2017.

“What I think the Yankees are probably looking at is to really understand that, given the game has changed so much in the last five to 10 years, it’s a good discipline for a baseball organization or any organization to re-evaluate if they are organized in the right way to meet the challenges going forward,” said Gennaro, the author of “Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball” and a former consultant to the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and Cleveland.

Read more: Yankees’ Hal Steinbrenner says ‘changes’ are coming, but what are they? 

Steinbrenner specifically singled out the team’s analytics department when he discussed bringing in an outside company, but manager Aaron Boone has said he expects there to be a more wide-ranging look into its functions. Sunday, team captain Aaron Judge — the Yankees’ best and highest-paid player — said he believes the club is among the best in the game at arming players with analysis and statistics to help them. However, he added that the team might be focusing too much on some statistics and not enough on others.

“But when you’re playing 162 games,” Judge said, “you’ve got to grind, and you’ve got to play through things. I think there are certain things you can’t put a number on.”

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Judge has said he’s looking forward to soon meeting with Steinbrenner to make suggestions on how to fix the team. The right fielder and ace Gerrit Cole each met with Steinbrenner approximately once a month during the regular season. Cole’s voice figures to be heard, too, this offseason.

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Aaron Judge wants change in analytics philosophy, plans to meet with Hal Steinbrenner

Judge seemed a little skeptical about whether an outside company would be of much help.

“I don’t know how an independent company — I don’t know if it’s a baseball company, I don’t know what kind of company it is or what they’re going to really give us,” he said. “But I guess it’s another set of eyes on (the team), and it gives some other opinion, and we can use it.”

Gennaro, however, said a review from an external source could be a difference-maker. He said resource allocation might be one of the top concerns for the consulting firm investigating the Yankees. The professor also suggested a few examples. He wondered whether the company would try to determine if the Yankees were emphasizing the best statistics or abilities in their player development department or if they were singling out the right attributes for players in trades.

“Do you have the right data sources?” Gennaro said. “Are you capturing the right data sources? I don’t mean that you should be capturing all of them. If you go back 15 years, analytics was getting your hands on any piece of data you could and figuring out what it tells you. Today, a lot of analytics should be about filtering out the data that you don’t need to know, that doesn’t inform your decisions. You have to start with the decision you want to make and then work backward to see what works.”

"Everything should be evaluated."

.@JackCurryYES weighs in on what went wrong for the Yankees in 2023, and what the team can do to make impactful changes next season. pic.twitter.com/Pv9bgXtTWB

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) October 1, 2023

Gennaro said he thinks the messenger matters. The outside company might look into who delivers which particular analytics to players.

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“You want to make sure that there’s not data that’s essentially noise,” he said. “You want to blend data and the human side of the game. It’s really important to understand how an organization is translating all these interesting insights to the game to the players on the field and the coaching staff. … Bottom line: Is the communications process such that the right information is getting to the right people at the right time to impact results on the field? People cannot deal with extraneous information. These are high-stress people going into high-stress situations, and to fill their heads with nonessential information is a distraction.”

He added that he doesn’t expect the company to suggest a massive overhaul.

“I’m sure there’s going to be anxiety, people wondering where they are going with all of this,” Gennaro said. “If anything, it may equip the existing leadership for a revised formula for success.”

And the review will almost surely alter some of the Yankees’ ways of doing business.

“I’m sure it’s going to be extensive,” Gennaro said. “You don’t bring a group like that in and do a cursory review.”

(Photo of Sean Casey and Aaron Judge during a game against the Kansas City Royals on July 21: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)

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