An analytic history of the New York Yankees baseball team by a rabid fan with strong opinions backed up by hard fact and cold logic
by Robert Zussman
There are lots of books about the New York Yankees. What there is not, though, is a book that thinks through the Yankees with analytic principles. That’s what I do here. My book uses analytics to explain what, on the field and off, made—and makes—the Yankees successful. It illuminates what made teams great and, sometimes, why teams flopped. It examines the Yankees’ great players and their not-so-great players, how their teams were put together, and how (very occasionally) they fell apart. I do have opinions and I am not shy about stating them. But I try to back up my opinions with evidence.
Discussions of overrated and underrated players are the core of Yankalytics. Much of the time, we take a player’s election to the Hall of Fame or as Most Valuable Player or to the all-star game as a measure of how good he is. Not here. Those are subjective ratings, based on the views of baseball writers or baseball fans – who do make mistakes. Fortunately, these days, we have pretty good measures of how good players are independent of more subjective ratings. These measures are the tools of analytics, like WAR (wins above replacement) or WAA (wins above average) or WPA (win probability added). These measures aren’t perfect, but at least they are based on players’ actual performance on the field, not their reputations. The use of analytics reveals, for instance, that players like Joe DiMaggio, Reggie Jackson, and Derek Jeter were overrated, while players like Mickey Mantle, Rickey Henderson, and Alex Rodriguez were underrated.
Yankalytics is also a book about the history of Yankees teams from 1903 to the present. I try to make sense of what the Yankees’ strengths and weaknesses were during various eras and on how the teams were assembled. Many teams lived up to the “Bronx Bomber” nickname and won primarily with offense. But not always. Some versions of the Yankees relied more on pitching and fielding.
Yankalytics, as the title implies, uses lots of numbers, but always in context, never for their own sake, always explained, always as part of an engaging story. There are also lots of arguments, a little nostalgia, and a good dose of occasional humor.
About the Author:
Robert Zussman taught sociology at Columbia University, SUNY-Stony Brook, and UMass-Amherst for forty years. More importantly, he was a life-long Yankees fan. Yankalytics is his discerning tribute to the team he rooted for since he was a ten-year-old in 1958. Unfortunately, Robert died while he was finishing Yankalytics. What he did finish stands on its own. (How could there be a conclusion to a story that will continue for many more years?) Yankalytics is his legacy to Yankee fans, baseball fans and anyone else who values good writing and clear thinking.