Former Yankees Prospect Blasts Organization Amid Team’s Struggles

“There is no baseball being taught there anymore.”

It’s no secret that the Yankees are mired in a miserable season. Entering play on Thursday, the Bombers are 60–61 and in last place in the American League East, 14 games behind the Orioles and 6.5 games behind the Blue Jays for the final wild-card spot. There have been numerous factors that have led to the team’s disastrous 2023, but according to one former minor leaguer, the issues that plague the organization run much deeper than this year.

Former outfielder Ben Ruta, who played in the Yankees’ minor league system from 2016 to ’20, criticized the franchise for leaning too heavily on analytics and lacking in proper baseball instruction while on the Foul Territory podcast on Wednesday.

“Fully expect them to clear house in the minor leagues … they will change developmental culture back to old Yankees days,” Ruta wrote in the episode’s comments section, per host Scott Braun. “Keep in mind, I played in the Yanks org. before analytics in ’16 to ’18, and then after in ’18 to ’20. Stark difference in development.”

When asked to cite an example of this issue, Ruta recounted how, in 2020, the minor league staff designed a game in which a batter would “win” by drawing a walk against a pitcher or hitting a ball with an exit velocity of at least 95 miles per hour, rather than getting a traditional hit with a lower exit velocity.

Ruta was a 30th-round draft pick by the Yankees in 2016. He reached Double A in ’19, and spent the ’21 season in the Padres’ organization.

Ruta took to the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, later in the day to add more context to his comments on the podcast.

“New York is a tough market,” he wrote. “Fans and media. Analytics are fine BUT when you have a bad product (and it’s obvious) and it gets defended by constantly telling you it’s not as bad as it looks b/c so and so analytic is actually really good. This is how a fan base gets frustrated.”