NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A month after Brian Cashman vehemently defended the Yankees’ analytics department, the man who runs it insisted their model had not gotten stale.
Assistant general manager Michael Fishman said the Yankees have continued to try to adjust their analytical processes over the years, even though the recent results have not been up to snuff.
“When we develop a model and we’re having success and relying on it, we don’t just say, ‘All right this is great, let’s keep using it,’ ” Fishman said Monday at the winter meetings. “We continue to test that model and see if there are adjustments that need to be made to it. Even some models we’ve had success with, there have been tweaks over the years to make that a little better.”
Asked if that model now needed tweaks or overhauls, coming off the Yankees’ 82-80 season and a number of recent transactions that have not worked out, Fishman hedged.
“I think there are some cases where tweaks are needed and some cases where overhauls are needed,” he said, though he declined to provide specifics on what might need an overhaul.
In the midst of an offseason that began with owner Hal Steinbrenner pledging “big changes,” Fishman said that there were “changes in discussion” with regards to his department.
When asked to clarify, Fishman said the Yankees have decided to “plan to make” changes, but they have not yet “fully implemented” them.
One likely area of change is how the team communicates its use of analytics to the players. Aaron Judge, on the final day of the regular season, indicated the Yankees needed to do a better job of “funneling [data] down to the players in the right format.”
“We welcome the feedback,” Fishman said. “We’ve had discussions with players, trying to get their perspective and any issues they have as well as some internal discussions of potentially if there are adjustments we need to make or not. … We’ve never done a good enough job. We always could have done better.”
Fishman also admitted the Yankees could do a better job of educating or explaining to their players why they value certain metrics.
Read Related Also: The Tragedies of Israel Waging an 'Ethical' War
“Why something could tell a story of what happened in the past but not be predictive of what happens in the future,” Fishman said when asked for an example.
The Yankees are still early in their year-long partnership with Zelus Analytics, the outside firm Fishman was behind bringing in to get a look at their algorithms.
Fishman clarified Monday that the Yankees won’t be opening their books for Zelus to audit, but that the Yankees will examine the company’s statistical models and compare them to their own.
“It’s an outside perspective, unbiased opinions, unbiased approach that may approach things in a different way than we did,” Fishman said. “A chance to get a different look. When creating statistical models … there’s never an end to the creation. You’re always trying to make the most predictive models and may have tried certain approaches on your own. They may have something you haven’t thought of, so it’s an opportunity to see what somebody else may have thought of. It can only make you better.”
Just how much the Yankees take from Zelus, though, remains to be seen.
It’s possible that they decide their own in-house numbers are better than what Zelus is using, as was the case for at least one team that used the company in the past.
“It’ll be on us to determine how to use their work and how to use our work to decide what to use and when and adjustments to make,” Fishman said.
In the meantime, Fishman said he appreciated Cashman’s fiery defense of the Yankees’ analytics group at last month’s GM meetings, but also understood the fan base’s ire.
“We have high standards; we haven’t met those high standards,” Fishman said. “We continue to do our best to get better.”
