Y, Robot: The Yankees as a Machine For Winning

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Are the Yankees actually Cylons in human form? The team does seem to be a machine perfectly constructed to achieve a .590 winning percentage. The evidence?

Over the five regular seasons from 2007 through 2011, the Yankees had the best overall regular season record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.

Over the five regular seasons from 2006 through 2010, the Yankees had the best overall regular season record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.

Over the five regular seasons from 2005 through 2009, the Yankees had the best overall regular season record in the majors, 478-332, for a.590 winning percentage over those five years.

A .590-winning percentage represents an average of between 95 and 96 wins a season. Over the two seasons 2010-2011, the Yankees won 192 regular season games, a 96-win average. Over the two seasons before that, 2008-2009, the Yankees won 192 regular season games, a 96-win average. Over the two seasons before that, 2006-2007, the Yankees won 191 regular season games, a 95.5 -win average.

Stadiums come and go, owners come and go, managers and players come and go. But the Yankees in recent years seem, after you filter out the small random fluctuations that appear in a single season’s standings, to have perfected (with the help of an infinite payroll) the art of delivering the same number of wins off the assembly line year after year.

It’s been more than 60 years since Jimmy Dykes referred to the great Yankee manager Joe McCarthy as the “push-button manager”, a nickname that stuck, to McCarthy’s eternal distress. It was an unfair crack (McCarthy was a very successful manager with both the Cubs before, and the Red Sox after, his stupendous career with the Yanks). But the sense of the Yankee franchise as a mechanical contraption that duplicates the same high level of wins year after year with an almost robotic efficiency has again become almost irresistible, given the predictability of the Bombers’ end result in season after season during recent years.

Nevertheless, although it may seem like it, the Yankees have not always been the top team in baseball at producing the most reliable year-in, year-out quality performance. One can go back through history and look at which team, at the end of each season, was then the “Best Team of the Past Five Years”. I’ll go through that longer-term history in my next post, but I promise, the top team is sometimes not the Yankees.

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Dr. Remulak

12 years ago

Roster depth is the key to sustained Yankee excellence. It is nice to have a handful of stars — most good teams do — but look at the names the Yankees have had in bench, platoon, 3-4-5 starter, and middle relief roles. This allows them to win when top guys are out or slumping.

Author

birtelcom

12 years ago

Reply to Dr. Remulak

Indeed. The the extra money available to the Yankees for payroll advantage gives them advantages all down the line. That can outbid others both for available free agents and for re-signing their own players when they want to keep them. And they can out-bid others for stars, for useful backups as well as for the 25th guy on the roster and the backups to the backups who get stashed in the minors. Of course the Yanks still have to pick the right guys to sign at least some of the time. But they can afford more misses than others can.… Read more »

Dr. Remulak

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Right bir, the Yankees can swallow more mistakes as well. Not many teams can over-spend on so many failures and still have money available to fund successes. Not many teams can shrug-off paying Kei Igawa $4m/yr to be the number three starter at AAA, as if it never happend. Or that fat, pusy toad, RIP. I blame the two of them for making the Yanks gun-shy on Darvish, who looks like a star in the making.

Mike L

12 years ago

Birtelcom-First post? Congratulations. I’ll look forward to more. Dr. Remulak is right. Spending money on stars hasn’t worked out as well for the Yankees-the mid to late 80’s and early 90’s Yankees spent a lot of money on a few name-brand (older) players, but were much weaker at the margins. Compare that to the Ray’s approach to roster-building, which uses younger, cheaper players but puts athleticism everywhere. I think that was a demonstration of John A’a post a couple of weeks ago with the graphs on WAR/age. The best bang for the buck is in the younger player-if if he’s… Read more »

Dr. Doom

12 years ago

Nice, birtelcom. That’s some serious consistency they’re putting out there.

Dr. Doom

12 years ago

Reply to Dr. Doom

And congrats on your first post! Eagerly awaiting your second!

Author

birtelcom

12 years ago

Thanks for the welcome. I look forward to participating at a site that has a corps of such lively and interesting commenters who give the discussions a scope and depth that the writers alone can’t possibly achieve by themselves. Each initial post is really just the jumping off-point for the discussion.

Luis Gomez

12 years ago

So, this means I won’t be able to catch you in the top commenters column. Just kidding, congratulations.

When I first started reading this blog (the old B-R blog) what I liked about it was how well the commenters wrote, not only with great arguments but with good grammar and very articulate, and that is something you can’t always find on the internet. Well done, Birtelcom. Looking forward for more.

Can we expect Ed, somewhere in the near future?

Hartvig

12 years ago

Let’s see: the math works and the reasoning is solid. No compelling reason to call you and idiot or need to point out that your fly is undone. Nothing left to say but well done. Now allow me to get the fireworks started by saying that this is exactly why there needs to be some kind of revenue sharing in baseball. While it is true that it is possible to spend an enormous amount of money and still be unsuccessful (Cubs, Mets) or to spend very little and still enjoy some success (Tampa Bay and… and… Bueller? Bueller?) the enormous… Read more »

Dr. Remulak

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

But there is a luxury tax, and meanwhile, attendance, TV revenue, etc. is solid, and a diverse range of teams have made the postseason and have won the world series. Meanwhile, billionaires like Pohland whine about small market limitations while pocketing luxury tax money and not re-investing in their teams. Remember, when Steinbrenner bought the Yankees he was not particularly wealthy (his family shipbuilding firm was on the brink), and the Yankees were not strong revenue generators. He invested, and re-invested, to make them what they are today.

Author

birtelcom

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

The Yankees have been saying that they intend to get under the luxury tax threshold ($189M) for the 2014 season. The way the luxury tax works, the tax increases for “repeat offenders”, so the more often the Yankees go over the tax threshold the more they pay. The new union contract phases in an increase in the luxury tax, so the Yankees, the only team that is already paying the maximum repeat offender tax, will pay more than they have been. But the new contract also allows a team to get an amnesty from its previous seasons over the tax… Read more »

Dr. Remulak

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Right, and unfortunately the $189m in 2014 clause will likely spell the end of Granderson, Swisher and Soriano as Yankees (or at least, 2 out of 3). Also, if Jeter hasn’t retired by then, he had better be willing to re-sign for about $1m. And why the Yankees offered ARod that unnecessary extension is beyond me.

Mike L

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

OK, birtelcom, the honeymoon period is over! Now, let’s address your evident anti-Yankee bias. The economic incentives for the Yankees to get below the threshold in 2014 are so large that I would think they would even be willing to risk a losing season in 2014 to get there. It’s not just the lower tax rate from the re-set, but also a refund of revenue sharing dollars they paid in. One of the significant advantages the Yankees have over almost all the other teams is more than just the Igawa or AJ mistakes (because a lot of teams have those),… Read more »

Author

birtelcom

12 years ago

Reply to Mike L

Thanks for the additional info, Mike. Complicating the Yankees’ issues yet further is that the $189M for 2014 is presumably going to have to include payments due under existing contracts previously signed in a context in which the Yankees were not accounting for such a cap: A-Rod at $26M, Sabathia at 24M, Teixeira at $23M.

All this pleasant discussion of Yankee dilemmas is extending, not ending, my honeymoon period!

Hartvig

12 years ago

Reply to Mike L

That’s actually one reason I don’t like the luxury tax: it creates a market distortion that still ends up primarily benefiting large market teams. If teams had to share local broadcast & gate revenues- because these teams are not broadcasting intrasquad games, the visiting team is part of the package- then teams would still have incentive to expand their revenues because 50% of a whole lot of money PLUS $10 is still more than 50% of a whole lot of money. It’s better to even out the shares of the pie a little while you keep making the whole pie… Read more »

Mike L

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

BTW, if you want to look at the impact of salary and revenue sharing as of the 2009 season, Forbes ran an article discussing profitability. I’m bot sure what the posting rules here on HHS, but I’m going to paste in the link below. Interesting (a little aggravating)

http://baseball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/19568/20100408/baseballs_team_by_team_profits_and_losses

MikeD

12 years ago

Reply to Hartvig

Hartvig, I agree in theory, but I can’t find evidence in reality that it’s hurting the game. The amount of money the game is generating across all teams is higher than ever and has grown much faster than inflation. Parks are filled compared to even twenty years ago. The value of franchises have increased substantially, and I suspect that when the Dodgers sell for a new record price it will drag the value of all francises up. (This will be good news for the Wilpons as they try and leverage the market value of the Mets to tap additional loans… Read more »

Author

birtelcom

12 years ago

It’s not a quantifiable matter, but my instinct is that a professional sport’s market appeal is enhanced when there are some (limited) structural inequities built into the competition to give some shape to the drama. Too much variation and randomness eventually gets boring — fans need villains and heroes, underdogs and overdogs, to help provide an overarching story line. The role of the Yankees as a sort of a fixed North Star through which to navigate the ups and downs of baseball history (since 1920 anyway) adds a certain piquancy to the game it might otherwise lack. That may not… Read more »

bstar

12 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Yeah, you’re probably right about the Yankees always being near the top of MLB as an overall a good thing; I do think it’s unfair to other teams, though, that so many Yankee games get shown on national televison as compared to small-market teams. I understand they’re going to get the best ratings, which means more money for ESPN and Fox, but the reality is that unless you’re a Red Sox or Yankees fan, it’s just another series for the rest of us(other than usually being between two good teams). Plus, for some reason Yanks-Sox games tend to take 4.5… Read more »