Miguel Enrique Andújar was born in San Cristóbal, in the Dominican Republic, on March 2nd, 1995. That same day, 968 miles north and northwest of the newborn child, the space shuttle Endeavour launched itself into low-earth orbit, bearing five men and two women. It returned to eastern Florida 16 days later, flew 17 more missions over the next 16 years, and was finally decommissioned on the first day of June, 2011. Andújar, now 23 years old and a finalist for this year’s Rookie of the Year Award, remains in active service.

In 2018, Andújar took 606 plate appearances for the Yankees. In 239 of those appearances, he reached base by hit, walk, or hit-by-pitch. 15 of those hits came in a seven-game stretch in April during which Andújar recorded a 1.706 OPS and joined Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle as the only Yankees to record seven straight games with an extra-base hit before turning 25. Of his hits, 47 were doubles, which tied an American League rookie record set by Fred Lynn in 1975 and vaulted Andújar past DiMaggio, this time, into the Yankee record books. Andújar also hit 27 home runs in 2018, and his 128 wRC+ was third-best among AL hitters under 25, behind Francisco Lindor and Alex Bregman.

I don’t know if Andújar tipped his servers well in 2018, or brushed his teeth every night without fail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. He did a lot of things right in 2018. And he was part of a powerful Yankees infield that included Didi Gregorius and Gleyber Torres.

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On a recent podcast episode, Eric Longenhangen and I discussed the premise for this article, which is another way of asking which organizations are healthiest in the short-to-medium term. The factor that goes furthest towards answering that question is present on-field talent, although salary, controlled years, the presence of impact minor leaguers on the horizon, and front-office quality are all relevant — as is payroll ceiling, which serves as a proxy for margin for error. With the World Series starting tonight, it seemed like the right time to look ahead at the favorites for the five World Series beyond this one.

I’ve experimented with some objective ways of measuring organizational health. I think it’s ultimately possible to produce an algorithm that would do a solid job, ranking teams objectively in a number of key categories. It would also require considerable time. Eager to arrive at some kind of answer, I’ve settled for subjective assessment for this version of the post, but I intend to work on something more systematic in the winter.

Here are the criteria I’ve considered to produce these rankings: short-term MLB talent, long-term MLB talent/upper-minors prospects, lower-minors prospects/trade capital, payroll ceiling, MLB coaching/front office, and amateur signings (draft and international). You could quibble and combine or separate a few of those groupings, or argue some of these can’t be quantified properly. You may be right, but we’ll keep tweaking things until they are.

I had originally intended to limit this list to five teams for purposes of symmetry, but the top tier looked like seven teams to me, and the sources by whom I ran this list agreed. In the same way that the I approached the Trade Value Rankings from the point of view of a medium-payroll, medium-term-focused team, I’ve undertook this exercise by asking which team would be most attractive to a prospect GM if his or her only interest is to win the most World Series possible (and not have low state income tax, run a childhood team, or live in a cool city) over the next five seasons.

Without further explanation, here are the organizations most likely to win the 2019-23 World Series.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers

The top-three teams on this list all have some reasonable claim to the top spot, but I ultimately went with the Dodgers, as they have a little more certainty in terms of on-field personnel than the Yankees possess, while both clubs feature similar built-in financial advantages. (Houston lags behind on the second count.)

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Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: SQL Developer

Position Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for an experienced SQL developer in their Baseball Operations department. This position reports to their senior Baseball Operations executives and will assist in the development of database systems. Their goal is to integrate these systems with existing baseball analytics tools and web-applications as part of their player information and evaluation platform.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Analyze business requirements and design reports using stored procedures to support Yankees front office baseball applications
• Perform data integrity checks between systems to identify discrepancies
• Set up ETL operations to import and normalize data from different data providers
• Performance tuning of SQL objects and queries
• Work with major and minor league pitch, hit and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources

Qualifications and Experience:

• Must have 3-5 years experience developing in T-SQL
• Proven experience developing stored procedures, CRUD operations and advanced data manipulation skills with T-SQL (CTEs, pivots, temp tables, XML)
• Ability to design and layout a database schema from scratch, including table objects, constraints, indexes, foreign keys, and triggers
• Experience in ETL operations, specifically loading data via different techniques, including bulk loading using BCP operations
• Experience performance tuning of queries and database objects, including things like table partitioning, index tuning, query hints, locking, schema normalization
• Ability to utilize SQL Profiler and a thorough understanding of execution plans
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance
• Proven understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas

Job Questions:

• How did you hear about this job?
• Do you have 3+ years experience writing in T-SQL?
• Describe techniques you have used for performing data loading operations.
• How you would approach the identification of a performance issue in a SQL query?
• Have you ever worked with any baseball datasets before? If so, please describe which ones and how you used them.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the following application.

Position: Web Application Developer

Primary Responsibilities:

• Assist in the design and implementation of web-based tools and applications for senior baseball operations personnel
• Migrate and adapt existing web applications for mobile devices and various hardware platforms
• Interface with all departments within Baseball Operations (scouting, player development, coaching, analytics) to build tools and reporting capabilities to meet their needs
• Work with major and minor league pitch, hit and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 3-5 years experience with data-driven web application development using:
  • ASP.NET/C# using MVC and WebAPI
  • nHibernate or other O/R framework
  • AngularJS and Bootstrap
• An understanding of CSS, cross-browser, and responsive web development, including a strong understanding of desktop vs. mobile UI/UX design techniques
• Familiarity with Microsoft Visual Studio and source code management tools (Subversion, Git, TFS/VSS)
• Proficient in SQL databases and various database design principles (Microsoft SQL Server a plus)
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices
• Excellent communication and problem solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas a plus

Job Questions:

• How did you hear about this job?
• Do you have experience writing database-driven web applications, using ASP.Net/C#?
• Describe one data-driven web application you’ve developed and how you’ve utilized ASP.NET/C# and an RDBMS in its development?
• Do you have experience with AngularJS or other client-side Javascript framework?
• List any active websites or mobile applications you have developed (and the technologies they use) that might showcase your work.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the following application.

Position: Data Engineer

Description:
The New York Yankees Baseball Operations department is accepting applications for an experienced data engineer with a focus on data quality analysis. This position reports to the senior Baseball Operations executives and will assist in the development and maintenance of the Yankees data processing pipelines.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Prepare, clean, format analytical datasets for processing by data scientists
• Become an expert in the team’s datasets, their strengths and weaknesses, and write code to pull and verify data in response to data scientist requests
• Using R, visualize complex, multi-source data to pinpoint data quality issues
• Build automated pipelines for processing and cleaning data
• Conduct database feature engineering to support ongoing quantitative research
• Work with developers to create and deploy systems for anomaly detection
• Interface with data scientists, software developers, and other baseball operations staff as needed
• Design department-wide principles and workflow for data quality management
• Serve as the main point-of-contact for questions about data structures, definitions, and quality

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field
• 3+ years of experience developing in SQL (preferably T-SQL)
• 2+ years of experience with data profiling, data modeling, and data pipeline development
• 2+ years of experience developing in R (or a similar statistical programming language), including experience with data manipulation and visualization in that language
• Ability to write succinct code with optimal performance and simplicity
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to break down a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas

Job Questions:

• How did you hear about this job?
• Describe your experience writing in T-SQL.
• Describe your experience writing in R. What packages do you use most?
• Describe your experience with data engineering and the specific techniques you’ve used.
• At a high-level, describe briefly what steps you would take to identify data biases or inconsistencies in an unfamiliar/new dataset?
• Have you ever worked with baseball data sets before? If so, please describe which ones and how you used them.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the following application.

Position: Associate, Quantitative Analysis

Description:
This position is a rigorous 12-month program geared to prepare entry level candidates for a career within the Baseball Operations industry.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in research and analysis of various baseball topics
• Design, test and implement predictive models using advanced statistical techniques
• Prepare, manage, and visualize large-scale data sets
• Develop processes for monitoring and ensuring data quality across multiple data sources
• Responsibilities may also include data collection and entry, running database queries and administrative tasks

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in a Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science or related field required
• Experience building predictive models, preferably in R
• Computer programming experience
• Experience using SQL
• Familiarity with current baseball research
• Understanding of fundamental concepts in statistics and probability

Job Questions:

• How did you hear about this job?
• When are you available to start?
• What classes have you completed in math, statistics, probability, and/or computer science?
• Describe any previous experience building statistical models.
• Which programming languages are you proficient in and what is your preferred language? If applicable to the language, please describe any libraries/packages you use.
• Describe any previous experience using SQL, if any.
• Please list any previous baseball/softball experience. This can include playing experience, research experience, coaching experience, writing experience, and more.
• Will you now or in the future need visa sponsorship status to lawfully work in the United States?

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the following application.

Position: Associate, Baseball Operations

Description:
This position is a rigorous 12-month program geared to prepare entry level candidates for a career within the Baseball Operations industry.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate and prepare advance scouting material for the New York Yankees
• Support the Baseball Operations and Pro Scouting staffs with daily logistical tasks
• Chart select games from video, as well as execute additional video projects
• Introductory level player evaluation
• Assist with various research tasks
• Data collection and entry
• Administrative tasks as assigned

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required
• Experience working with BATS coaching system
• Must be able to recognize pitch types and know how to score a baseball game
• General understanding of MLB rules and regulations
• Detail oriented and organized
• Strong verbal communication and collaborative skills
• Experience working with video and in baseball

Job Questions:

• How did you hear about this job?
• What is the earliest date that you are available to start the Associate program?
• What are your favorite statistics for evaluating baseball players?
• What are your favorite baseball-related websites, books, or podcasts?
• Who do you think are the five best starting pitchers in MLB right now?
• Do you have any previous baseball or softball experience? Please provide specific examples.
• Will you now or in the future need visa sponsorship status to lawfully work in the United States?

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the following application.

These descriptions are intended to describe the type of work being performed by a person assigned to these positions. They are not an exhaustive list of all duties and responsibilities required by the employee. The New York Yankees is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The company is committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment.

Episode 839
Dan Szymborski is the progenitor of the ZiPS projection system and a senior writer for FanGraphs dot com. He’s also the guest on this edition of the program, during which he examines which managers have produced the best performances of the postseason. Also: Szymborski’s argument for playing Matt Kemp at shortstop. And: a status update on the forthcoming projections for 2019.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 49 min play time.)

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At the Yankees’ end-of-season press conference at Yankee Stadium on Friday, the team revealed that shortstop Didi Gregorius will undergo Tommy John surgery and, as a result, miss a substantial portion of the 2019 season. For better or worse, the announcement of his absence threw plenty of fuel on a hot-stove fire that’s been lit early by the Yankees’ elimination, as this would appear to intensify the team’s interest in pending free agent Manny Machado.

First, Gregorius. Manager Aaron Boone believes that the 28-year-old injured his right elbow while retrieving a rebound off Fenway Park’s Green Monster during one of the AL Division Series games, though general manager Brian Cashman said that when the team acquired him from the Diamondbacks in December 2014, he already had a partial tear that was “asymptomatic” and that the current tear was “the finishing part of something that was a sleeping giant.”

Either way, it’s a bummer. Gregorius is coming off a breakout season in which he recorded a .268/.335/.494 like with 27 homers, 10 steals, a 122 wRC+, and 4.6 WAR. All but the batting average represent career highs. He did all of that while missing 16 games in August and September due to a bruised left heel and then five games in late September due to a cartilage tear in his right wrist. Playing through the latter injury, he went 4-for-17 with a double in the Yankees’ five postseason games.

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The Yankees’ 2018 campaign came to a disappointing end on Tuesday. After a 100-win regular season that, under normal circumstances, would have won them the division, they were forced to face the A’s in the American League’s Wild Card game. And while they managed to get past Oakland, New York ran into trouble against a Boston club that produced 108 victories, losing the final two games due, in part, to rookie manager Aaron Boone’s reluctance to utilize his bullpen.

Now the focus for the Yankees moves to 2019, when the team will be forced to compete not only with the Red Sox but also the lofty standards set by the club’s 2018 season.

In a sense, 2018 was a transition year for the New York. On the one hand, yes, they began the season by trading for the National League MVP and ended it with 100 wins. On the other, though, rookies — most notably Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres — accounted for 1,528 of the club’s plate appearances, the highest total for the franchise since 1969, when Bobby Murcer became a full-time starter. The club’s 5.7 WAR from rookie position players is the third-highest total in the past 30 years behind only last season (due solely to Aaron Judge) and 1989 (when Alvaro Espinoza, Bob Geren, and Roberto Kelly were rookies).

As part of their “transition,” the team finally reduced their payroll by a sufficient amount to avoid the competitive-balance tax and reset the penalties associated with it. From 2014 to -17, the Yankees spend an average of $256 million per year in payroll and penalties combined, per Cot’s Contracts. This season, they are likely to end up around $195 million. The Yankees, in other words, just cut payroll by $60 million. And not only that: because they drew 300,000 more fans than last season and also face a more modest revenue-sharing burden under the new CBA, New York likely ended up with $100 million more in 2018 than previous seasons. In light of that, it’s unsurprising to find that the organization is reportedly planning to buy back the YES Network from Disney when the latter sells it off to acquire part of FOX’s assets. The Yankees are awash in cash, and they shouldn’t have any limitations in free-agent spending this offseason.

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The whole division-series round went just two games more than the minimum. The last team eliminated, of course, was the Yankees, who lost Game 4 to the Red Sox on Tuesday. There’s a whole host of reasons why the Yankees lost the game, and why the Yankees lost the series. But I’m going to remember one or two moments. There was the Eduardo Nunez throw to an outstretched Steve Pearce to record the very final out. I wasn’t at any point convinced Nunez had it in him. And there was also what happened mere minutes before. Craig Kimbrel faced Gary Sanchez with one out and the bases loaded in a two-run game. The count ran full. The call was for a high fastball.

The pitch selection wasn’t surprising. Kimbrel throws a bunch of high fastballs. Sanchez had already swung through two high fastballs. When Kimbrel works in two-strike counts, he throws either a fastball high or a breaking ball low. That’s what Kimbrel always tries to do. Against Sanchez, he didn’t execute. Against Sanchez, he threw one of the worst Kimbrel fastballs imaginable.

Granted, even a bad Kimbrel fastball still gets up there really fast. But Sanchez was ready. A two-strike count is a swinging count. Sanchez made contact and hit the ball in the air. It came off his bat at 107 miles per hour.

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A night after he was pilloried, both here and elsewhere, for sticking with his starting pitcher for too long, Yankees manager Aaron Boone did it again — this time in an elimination game. It wasn’t quite as egregious, and it didn’t turn the contest into a blowout, but the rookie skipper was short on urgency with his team’s season on the line, and it cost them. The Red Sox beat the Yankees 4-3 in Game Four of the AL Division Series (box), closing out the series on their rivals’ home field and moving on to the ALCS for the first time since 2013.

With the Yankees down two games to one in the Division Series, Boone started CC Sabathia, who at 38 years old is long on experience and guile but short on stamina. Of the 128 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings as a starter this season, the big man’s 5.28 innings per turn ranked 102nd. It didn’t prevent him from turning in a valuable season: over the course of 153 innings, he delivered a 3.65 ERA, 4.16 FIP, and 2.5 WAR, the last mark 0.6 wins higher than last year in a similarly sized body of work (148.2 innings). Some credit for that is due to Boone for limiting Sabathia’s exposure the third time through the order (when his wOBA allowed jumps to .391), and some to the pitcher himself, for accepting his role and his limitations.

On Tuesday night, against a lineup stacked with righties — Ian Kinsler and Eduardo Nunez were back at second and third bases, respectively, in place of Game Three heroes Brock Holt and Rafael Devers, while Steven Pearce subbed again for Mitch Moreland at first base — Sabathia wobbled through the first inning on 20 pitches. After retiring the first two hitters, he loaded the bases with two singles and a walk before escaping via a towering Kinsler fly ball that left fielder Brett Gardner ran down near the foul line. He prolonged his second inning with a two-out walk of Christian Vazquez, the No. 9 hitter and a guy who posted a 42 wRC+ in the regular season. That required him to face leadoff hitter Mookie Betts again. On the 15th pitch of the inning, though, Betts hit a routine fly to right for the third out.

Sabathia was in trouble from the outset of the third, hitting Andrew Benintendi with a pitch and then yielding a single to Pearce that sent Benintendi to third; he soon came home on a J.D. Martinez sacrifice fly, the game’s first run. Sabathia induced Xander Bogaerts to ground out, but by this point had thrown another 16 pitches, running his count to 51. Boone, with a rested set of A-listers (save for Chad Green, who threw 29 pitches on Monday night, at a point well after any of them mattered), had finally gotten David Robertson up in the bullpen — the kind of power arm sorely needed in mid-inning on Monday night, but one who never got the call.

Kinsler smoked a double (exit velocity 106.2 mph) over Gardner’s head in left field, scoring Pearce and putting the Red Sox up by a score of 2-0.

Boone stayed put.

Nunez hit an RBI single to right, pushing the tally to 3-0.

Boone stayed put.

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NEW YORK — In stark contrast to the proficiency with which he handled staff ace Luis Severino in the Yankees’ AL Wild Card win, pulling the right-hander after four electrifying (if wild) innings, manager Aaron Boone appeared to be caught flat-footed last night in Game Three of the AL Division Series against the Red Sox.

Well equipped to handle Severino’s heat, the Boston lineup — featuring four players who didn’t start Game Two — hit scorcher after scorcher off the 24-year-old righty through the first three innings, building up a 3-0 lead in the process. By the time Boone came out of the dugout, three batters into the fourth inning, he was too late. The pitcher to whom he turned offered little relief, too. The resulting seven-run outburst broke the game open, paving the way for the Red Sox to humiliate the Yankees 16-1, the most lopsided postseason loss in the franchise’s history and one that pushed them to the brink of elimination in the best-of-five series.

The small fraction of the 49,657 attendees who stuck around to the bitter end witnessed not only that bit of history but another, as well, as Red Sox second baseman Brock Holt became the first player ever to hit for the cycle in a postseason game. The coup de grâce came in the form of a two-run ninth-inning homer off Austin Romine, normally the Yankees’ backup catcher but here just the second position player ever to pitch in a postseason game.

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Tom Hamilton has been the radio voice of the Indians since 1990. Very early into that tenure there was a chance — albeit a small one — that he would move on and spend the bulk of his career elsewhere. How might that have happened? In the winter following Hamilton’s second year in Cleveland, the Detroit Tigers inexplicably informed iconic broadcaster Ernie Harwell that 1991 would be his final season in the booth.

“Ernie told me that I should apply for the job, or at least go if I got called,” Hamilton explained. “I felt uncomfortable about that — nobody wanted to see Ernie have his career end that way — but he came to me and said that I should. The Tigers did call, so I interviewed even though I didn’t really have an interest. Not only was I happy in Cleveland, I didn’t want to be the guy following Ernie.”

Rick Rizzs, who is now in Seattle, ended up getting the job. Predictably, he wasn’t well-received. While Rizzs was, and remains, a quality baseball play-by-play announcer, that means little when you’re stepping into the shoes of a legend.

Another Wolverine State sports legend made Hamilton’s reluctant interview more than worthwhile. Read the rest of this entry »