The last-place Yankees, drowning in the deep end of the analytics pool, already have begun their move back to old-school baseball: Hitting coach Dillon Lawson — considered an analytics genius when he was hired — was fired midseason, and the Yankees added a pair of former stars who were plain ol’ hard-nosed players in their days, interim hitting coach Sean Casey and pitching mentor Andy Pettitte.
And former Yankees prospect Ben Ruta expects the coaching purge to engulf every level of the organization because running an MLB franchise based almost solely on analytics “is just dumb.”Ruta doesn’t speculate on manager Aaron Boone’s future, but, with each sleepwalking loss by the Yankees, it’s less likely Boone will return.
During an episode of the “Foul Territory” podcast on Wednesday, Ruta, who was with the organization from 2016-2021, ripped Cashman’s all-in commitment to analytics, which led to an impotent Opening Day lineup that included forever-slumping Aaron Hicks, aging-before-our-eyes Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu, a weak-hitting catching duo and other lineup deficiencies.
If analytics built this roster — and we haven’t even mentioned a starting rotation that can’t stay healthy — it’s time to toss the laptops off the upper deck.
[
www.nj.com]
