Ardent fans of sports talk radio will never forget Omar Minaya’s “you have a one and a two…” soundbite, one of the more iconic turns of phrase ever heard on WFAN’s airwaves.
He’s still an old school guy when it comes to his team-building approaches, but as he said during his introductory press conference Thursday as the Yankees’ newest special advisor to baseball operations, ‘I’ve never met a good baseball man who didn’t push for what they believe in.’
“Once a contrarian, always a contrarian, I guess, but I’ve always prided myself on thinking outside the box,” Minaya joked when asked about his legendary contradictory ways. “In that room, when you’re making decisions, I’m not one to always conform to what the industry is saying – and if you go against the grain, sometimes you have to be right – but being in a front office for many years, the one thing I learned early on is when you believe in something, push for it.”
But he now knows, more than three decades into his career in a baseball front office, that just because he has an opinion doesn’t mean it’s going to come to fruition.
“I’ll have an opinion, and if you can find be a good baseball man that does not push for what they believe in, show him to me,” Minaya said. “I hope I can bring outside the box ideas to any situation I’m involved with; that doesn’t mean they’ll get implemented, but I’ve learned also that once something is decided, you move on and that’s that.”
As he has a background in scouting, Minaya said he’s most proud of “finding the guys no one’s thought about,” which is something Brian Cashman and his front office have excelled at of late. Luke Voit, Gio Urshela, and Wandy Peralta were unheralded additions that paid huge dividends for the Yankees, and the scouting department has found – and found ways to utilize – guys like Oswaldo Cabrera who weren’t necessarily top prospects but became key Yankee cogs.
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Part of that success is based in the Yankees’ focus on analytics, and Minaya has nothing but great things to say about assistant GM Michael Fishman and the team’s analytics department.
The key to doing it right, though, is balance, according to Minaya.
“The key word is balance. I think we all agree the game has changed, and we have to be open to all forms of new information, but when you talk about organization building, balance is best,” Minaya said. “I take a lot of pride in learning new things and working with all these people who have new ideas in the game. I believe the human element counts, but I think anytime you make a decision, it has to be balanced.”
He wouldn’t speak to where that balance is with the Yankees, only saying “I think this organization has done a great job based on the wins, but we want to always get better, and I’m honored and look forward to being part of that.”
However, as much as he knows decision-making has evolved, both in terms of information and the decision-making team, over the years, he’s ready for the challenge – because he remembers an old contemporary who was once at the forefront of an “analytic” that became a huge part of the game.
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“The game has grown in a lot of good ways, and for the good – but like anything else, we’ve all been there when things change. You have so many more people involved and you should, with all these big contracts and all the changes on the amateur and international side,” Minaya said. “But I look back at Stick (former Yankees GM Gene Michael) – and he was one of the first early on to covet on-base percentage. That was analytics back then!”
Michael came up as a player in the Pirates organization in the 1960s, a time when the team had big boppers in the middle (in this case, Clemente, Stargell, and Donn Clendenon) but had guys who could get on base all around, and became a dynasty in the 1970s once divisional play began.
In fact, in Michael’s rookie year of 1966, of the seven non-catcher regulars, 1960 World Series hero Bill Mazeroski had the lowest slash line in every category – at .262/.296/.398, where the next lowest numbers among the group were .279/.334/.418 – so Stick saw it first-hand in action.
“He played with my mentor, Sandy Johnson, so we had a lot of conversations, and he was ahead of his time in his ways of thinking about certain data,” Minaya said of Michael. “He was a hell of a baseball man but he knew that it’s not just the eye, you have to use the info you have, too.”
The Yankees of recent years have been labeled as being too home-run heavy, too strikeout-prone, and other pejorative descriptions, so perhaps Minaya’s contrarian eye will be able to help restore that balance in the team building process.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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