Saturday, November 4, 2023

The fate of the Yankees lies within something called Zelus Analytics

Behold The Z-Team: 

Leading off, there's Dashing Doug Fearing, followed by Crazy Hair Luke Bornn (old "Double N"), the mysterious Inderpal Singh at DH, and Dangerous Dan Cervone - the Four Horsemen of the Yankee Apocalypse - the top four at Zelus Analytics, the team of wonks, crunchers and algorithms that has been hired to figure out what the hell is wrong with the Yankees.

Let's hope they find a Fibonacci sequence - (a Rizzutonacci sequence?) - that will restore the Yankees to, well, whatever the hell they were... long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

(In case you're wondering, in Greek mythology, Zelos was the daimon that personifies dedication, emulation envy and jealousy. In a nice symmetry,  considering the Yankee fan base, the English word "zealot" stems from this name.)

In my years of following the Death Barge - an obsession that extends back to the glory days of M&M - I cannot recall a Yankee owner punting on his gut and hiring an outside analytics firm to analyze the interior analytics department. Crunching the crunchers. Part of me wants to believe it's a good thing. But I dunno...

Maybe Prince Hal realizes something horrible has gone astray, that the Yankees somehow last summer became a toxic environment, and he's willing to try something - anything - to change things. Zelus will generate a garage full of data, and maybe somewhere within those numbers, the pencil-pushers can explain how somebody thought it was a good idea to get Joey Gallo from the Rangers in 2021, launching the Texas trajectory toward a championship. Maybe they'll solve the mysteries of Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino, Estavan Florial, et al. 

Or maybe they'll turn an already soul-less franchise over to Artificial Intelligence. 

Or maybe they'll just give Hal new ideas on how to make money. 

And therein lies the concern.

With or without a world championship, Hal will do just fine. The Yankees control the most lucrative market in American sports, and it will take years of domination by the Mets before they lose that toehold. 

Of course, if they ever do lose it, it will take decades to get it back.

Let's wish Zelus well. For posterity, here's their elevator pitch, direct from the website: 

Professional sports teams are currently engaged in a billion-dollar arms race to squeeze wins out of data. While early innovations in sports analytics largely relied on simple techniques, many teams are struggling to handle emergent challenges with the complex data sources now dominating the space. At Zelus Analytics, our mission is to address these challenges by building the world’s leading sports intelligence platform. In so doing, we intend to help the professional teams in our exclusive partner network compete and win championships.

So it goes.

31 comments:

  1. Good Lord Commander Duque, they have photos and bios of every employee currently brainiac-ing for the company (just keep clicking that right facing arrow on their website).

    PLUS, ZELUS IS HIRING!!!!:

    Interested in how our platform could improve outcomes for your team? Do you have a business or partnership opportunity you’d like to discuss? Send us an email, or send a message with this form. If you’re interested in working here, or just learning more about a career at Zelus, please check out the links under “Careers”!

    We should direct them here, to our happy little blog so that they can put us all on the payroll because we can provide them with the only unwavering data they’ll need to right this sinking death barge.

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  3. The Ayatollah's working for a sports data company? What a mixed up world we live in.

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  4. AA - Yes! They should use the blog archives as data points. Our hive mind should be mined. There's only one bias that we all have that could screw the data set. We want to win.

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  5. So, who's going to submit the application? Being lazy, it won't be me.

    I wish it were actually an audit and was actually hope, but this is just HAL doubling down on his horrible strategy.

    But he doesn't care, because either way he will make money.

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  6. Analytics people analyzing other analytics people. It won’t be good.

    Choke up on the bat with two strikes.

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  7. Zelus will generate a garage full of data...

    And Aroldis will shoot holes in it, both metaphorically and actually.

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  8. Please tell me that this is a joke.

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  9. The Yankees inability to translate isolated metrics like exit velocity, bat spin or spin rates, into anything more than high injury rates, prodigious strikeouts and a generation or more of incompetent baseball, will not be salvaged by a bunch of geeks. The geeks are the problem.

    I'm not opposed to statistics or analysis, I'm a social scientist. I work with them every day. But the disconnect between these isolated metrics and the game of baseball, never mind actually WINNING games, is yawning. Doubling down on the problem with a fresh set of geeks, even further removed from the game, the team or their outcomes, means Hal, Brian and gang have learned nothing. Absolutely nothing.

    What's worse, this is a PR exercise, meant to fool fans. It won't work. It hasn't worked and it will never work. The front office and their elitist, geek squad approach to baseball is the problem. Only front office mass firing, followed by restocking the leadership with experienced and proven baseball professionals will make the slightest bit of difference. Not only to the outcome of the games, but the opinion of Yankee fans who unanimously want Cashman fired.

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  10. I would be happy to submit the application.......not that I ill but I would be HAPPY to.

    REN level HAPPY!

    Hello, boys and girls, this is your old pal Stinky Wizzleteats
    This is a song about a whale—
    No!
    This is a song about being happy
    That's right!
    It's the Happy Happy Joy Joy song!

    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy Joy

    I don't think you're happy enough
    That's right!
    I'll teach you to be happy
    I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs
    Now, boys and girls, let's try it again

    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy
    Happy Happy Joy Joy Joy

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  11. I call it Yanakalytics and you left out Doofus Semndrake.

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  12. Have any of these guys ever played the game, or are they just number crunchers? I'm betting they haven't (at least any level above t-ball) and I cannot envision the kind of success these wonkers will have. More numbers?!?!? More losses. Numbers don't play the game,

    In the immortal words of Casey Stengel: "Can anybody here play this game?"

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  13. Note the last line of the Zelus pitch. They promise to help clients compete and win championships.

    Now, right there, you have a big difference between them and Hal Cashman.

    From Hal's point of view, consultants are great. You can just ignore any of their recommendations, but you get good-ish press for just hiring them.

    Happy Happy Joy Joy

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  14. Thanks for that excellent report, Duque. And...sad!

    Yes, this report is just being commissioned to allow the Yankees to go on operating exactly as they have in the past. The report won't be made public—unless it is even more ass-kissing and happy happy joy joy than even we can imagine—and the Yanks will just say that it confirms everything they've been doing, with some tiny caveat, such as IKF should get more playing time.

    Quite a cover-up!

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  15. My God, was that elevator pitch written by AI, or was it written by AI? Come to think of it, why not let ChatGPT manage, and general manage, the Yankees? Couldn't be worse than what they're doing now!

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  16. My take on this is that HAL needed to spend some money to knock down his tax bill. He must've made too much money this year and needed a tax shelter. How much is he paying these guys? Probably somewhere around 25 mill. Almost makes you wanna grab a computer, build a website, and proclaim yourself a "special consultant", doesn't it?

    This is straight out of The Three Stooges, Catch 22, Breakfast of Champions, H.M.S. Pinafore, Space Balls. Feel free to add more, if you can think of some.

    Meanwhile, let us all sing:

    Soy un perdadorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
    I'm a loser baybeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
    So why don't you kill meeeeeeee?

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  17. I’m looking forward to the Zelda arm patch for next season - do they have some kind of god-like creature as their logo?

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  18. Maybe it should be Zelda -my AI seems to prefer it.

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  19. we intend to help the professional teams in our exclusive partner network compete and win championships.

    If two teams in their "exclusive partner network" play against one another doesn't that give Zelus a conflict of interest?

    Or are "ethics" an outlier on Zelus' analytical spectrum?

    Or, maybe it's a moot point because the analytics don't work equally well for all teams in the "exclusive partner network"?

    It's all bullshit.

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  20. Well, we can look at it two ways. (1) Analytical geeks have no ethics. Because numbers/data don't have any ethics. (2) The number crunching operation is just a tax shelter for rich billionaires to siphon off revenue. So ethics hardly matter. Because it ain't about winning. It's just about reducing taxes.

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  21. AA, I salute you!

    It's log, it's log
    It's big and heavy and wood
    It's log, it's log
    It's better than bad, it's good!

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  22. Reorg projects usually go nowhere, because when the consultants tell the org how when and why the org has been fucking up, the org gets annoyed and fires the consultants.

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  23. This post and thread are emblematic of how and why I love you all.

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  24. I'm going to apply (solo) and see what happens . . . as an experiment.

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  25. Well not exactly apply - but I did reach out :)

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  26. Remember the happier days, when we'd playfully mock "Yank-jazeera?"

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  27. And in the end, they will submit an 86 page report coming to the conclusion that the last season was derailed, largely due to the rash of injuries, and, anyway, the playoffs are a crapshoot

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  28. They will further conclude that 2023 was an aberration and that, in anticipation of the Yankees fielding a “championship-caliber team, Hal should raise ticket prices.

    In addition, it will be recommended that Cashman and Boone be given contract extensions owing to their excellent leadership skills in guiding the Yankees to another winning season.

    And, in the immortal words of Kevin Bacon “Be calm! All is well!”

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  29. DickAllen, how did you get a hold of the final version so quickly?

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  30. Quoting Mr. Horse...

    “Hmmmmmmm.......No sir I don't like it.”

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