When New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone stepped out of the dugout to take the ball from starting pitcher Max Fried in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series against the Boston Red Sox, I immediately knew the internet would explode.

Fried had thrown 102 pitches and seemed like he had more juice, and I knew it would become the latest example of Yankees fans accusing Boone of paying too much attention to advanced analytics. Sure enough, those metrics became the boogeyman — like the seasons before. The old-school, “analytics are ruining baseball” crowd came out of the woodwork, shouting that Boone is a laughing stock of the league because he pays attention to the advanced metrics.

Analytics are just information, information one needs to act upon. They don’t make decisions. People do. In other words, when people accuse Boone of following the numbers, they lose sight of the fact that even when the analytics team is presenting him with information on matchups or how a player is projected to perform, he’s still making the decision.

I simply don’t know how, from that analytics-as-information perspective, anyone can argue that advanced numbers are bad for baseball. I know when I make a decision, I gather information beforehand, so I imagine as a manager with important games on the line, I’d want to see what the advanced numbers suggest beforehand.

And the suggestion that Boone is simply a robot carrying out front-office decisions? That’s a step too far. Boone has said he goes over analytics before every game, but no one can plan for every possible situation. At the end of the day, he has to make decisions he’s comfortable defending for better or worse. We’re years into fans accusing the organization of relying on analytics too much. A couple years ago, general manager Brian Cashman responded to that narrative with one of his most head-scratching comments: 

“People talk about we’re analytically driven, right? We had the smallest analytics department in the American League East… we had the largest pro scouting department in all of baseball…” Cashman said, via SNY, in 2023. “No one’s doing their deep dives. They’re just throwing their ammunition and their bullsh–, and accusing of us being run analytically.”

That didn’t help. First of all, I’m not sure I’d be bragging about having fewer people collecting critical information than my competition. In fact, it only added fuel to the fire, almost sounding like the exact extreme statement somebody in denial mode would say. It’s like Cashman was fed up with answering questions about analytics and decided to throw something out there, hoping to shut down rumors.

Two years later, though, as the organization that all but invented the “championship or bust” notion sees its World Series drought grow to 16 years, that comment feels even more revealing. Either it wasn’t true, or it exposed a deeper issue. And I don’t know Cashman or owner Hal Steinbrenner, but I can see how a man who constructed championship teams decades ago and a man who grew up watching his dad build great teams the old-school way would be skeptical of advanced numbers.

But the fact is: the Yankees look to be falling behind. There’s a reason the Yankees have felt shallow over the past few years — because analytics and player evaluation aren’t always about the Aaron Judges or Shohei Ohtanis of the world. They’re about getting guys who will complement those stars, they’re about the guys who need to get on base for those stars to do damage, they’re about building depth and balance. That’s the thing; when people look at the Los Angeles Dodgers, they see talent and superstars, but what we should notice is how the Dodgers use data to refine every detail — roster construction, matchups, development — until they win the margins.

The result? The Dodgers finished the regular season below-average in strikeout rate. The Yankees finished with the sixth-highest. And the Dodgers made it past the Division Series. The Yankees did not.

When we look at the past two decades of the Yankees’ downturn, we see it correlates with the emphasis on analytics throughout baseball. And yes, they’ve been consistently in the playoffs, but that’s not good enough. In this way, they’re victims of their own success. Last year, the Yankees lost to the Dodgers in the World Series and just lost in the division series to the Toronto Blue Jays. Neither is acceptable.

And while I guess one could find a silver lining in those results, I would argue they only make that statement more telling. They are good enough to make it to the postseason, but in the moments where analytics matter most, where having the right role players pays off, they fall short. Those moments suggest the Yankees’ process is getting them close but not close enough, that analytics aren’t the issue, and that the Yankees as an organization have a flawed approach to them.