Former prospect Ben Ruta continued to give a behind-the-scenes view of how the Yankees have implemented analytics over the past few years — and how he believes things have gone too far.
Ruta, a Yankees prospect from 2016-21, made headlines Wednesday when he was in the “Foul Territory” live chat on Wednesday and then appeared as a guest on the program Thursday.
Ruta mentioned one specific analytic that the Yankees, he said, relied heavily on, which was hit-effects OPS.
The stat focuses on exit velocity and launch angle to come up with a projected OPS while eliminating luck as a factor, Ruta explained.
“The problem I have with this metric is strikeouts do not dock you and you see that because they use this in the minors and they use this to make free agent decisions,” Ruta said. “So they’re signing guys and they’re making trades based off this.
“And that’s why you get a lot of high strikeout guys in the majors.”
He has been outspoken about how the Bombers have not used the tools in the right way, to the detriment of their own players, but Ruta has also insisted that he isn’t against the use of analytics.
Ruta also surmised that the biggest flaw with the Yankees has been that they have been “getting too many of the same guys and trying to make everyone the same player.”
The Yankees have been under the microscope as the club fell below .500 (60-61) after getting swept by the Braves on Wednesday.
It’s the latest the team has been under the .500 mark this late in a season since Sept. 5, 1995.
One of Ruta’s other big revelations during the half-hour appearance on “Foul Territory” was that a member of the Yankees player development staff reamed out the 2019 Double-A Trenton Thunder, then the Yankees’ Eastern League affiliate, after some players started to push back on the organization’s decision that they didn’t want minor leaguers using baseball tees as analytics started to play a bigger role.
The incident occurred right around the trade deadline, according to Ruta when the Yankees’ “head of player development” called a team meeting while the club was in Altoona
“Head of player development comes into town because none of us are doing any of this stuff,” Ruta said. “And we just get reamed out, like reamed out. ‘You guys think you’re so good. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. We’re about to have the trade deadline, now, no one’s calling for anyone on this team.’”
Ruta didn’t name who the player development staffer was during the interview, but Kevin Reese was the team’s senior director of player development in 2019, while Eric Schmitt was the director.
Ruta said the staff member then started to call out individual players about the way they had been playing in front of the team, including saying one player had been playing “s–tty.”
Ruta said first baseman Chris Gittens, who is now playing in Japan, felt the wrath, even though he hit 23 homers that season.
“We’re just getting reamed out for all this stuff. So I mean, that I think put us all over the edge. And I didn’t appreciate that at all, to be honest. And I know a lot of the coaches didn’t either because our manager left that year, you know, that offseason.”
But apart from the negatives, Ruta did provide some optimism about how things could quickly change for the organization if they make a slight change.
“They should focus on getting some guys where you can get them on those big league minimum salaries for three years and you have an All-Star,” Ruta said. “Then you fill in the rest of those spots with your free agent signings, big money guys, and then you have a stud team like the Braves. … I think the Yankees could do that easy.”
