New York Yankees Add Experienced Voices Omar Minaya And Brian Sabean To Balance Out Front Office

One of the themes when Omar Minaya spoke about his new posting as a senior advisor to baseball operations was balance.

As in the balance between the world of analytics and the eye test of how things are unfolding in front of him and Minaya became the second high profile former general manager to get tapped to help Brian Cashman during this season.

“I’m not one of those to conform to what the industry is saying or what people say,” Minaya said during Thursday’s virtual conference call. “You got to be able to sometimes be right when you go up against the grain. But I hope that I’m able to bring new ideas and bring different ideas and kind of offer outside-the-box ideas.”

It hardly is an open secret of how analytical the Yankees have turned in recent years, similar to a lot of baseball but perhaps more noticed when certain trades and signings do not pan out but it is not an open secret Cashman would deny the charge of how extensive analytics rule the Yankee method in evaluation.

Perhaps the addition of Minaya in conjunction with Tuesday’s hiring of Brian Sabean as an executive advisor will make those meetings more of a combination of analytics and what is actually being seen by scouts and others.

“Me and Brian have been friends for many years competing against each other,” Minaya said. “But we just have a good friendship and to me, this is one of the reasons that I’m here.”

Minaya is back in a New York front office for the fourth time, though he noted the differences between the Queens side of baseball and the Bronx aspect of baseball from his time growing up in New York.

“For me, it’s a great start for the new year to be able to be with a team — a local team,” he said. “As a kid that grew up in New York his whole life and grew up on the east side of New York City and Queens, to be able to have this opportunity to be here with part of a storied organization like the New York Yankees, for me and my family, it’s great. I’m looking forward to being part of the Yankee family.

“And for me, like I said, when you’re from Queens, you go into the Bronx, I do remember one thing: I do remember as a kid going to Yankee Stadium and they used to have bat days and helmet days and I used to have a Horace Clarke bat. If you grew up in those days, it was Channel 11, and everybody used to raise their bats.

Stint number one with the Mets was as assistant general manager to Steve Phillips as the team erased the stench of the 1992 and 1993 seasons to make the Subway Series in 2000, a topic of numerous books. After a stint with the MLB-owned Montreal Expos, he returned to the Mets in 2004 to serve as GM where he signed Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez, Billy Wagner, acquired Carlos Delgado and also saw the beginning stages of the careers of David Wright and Jose Reyes.

It also was in stint number two where he was put in the awkward position of firing manager Willie Randolph on the West Coast in June 2008, a move that famously was announced at 3 am New York time. His second stint ended in 2010 ushering the era of Terry Collins and Sandy Alderson and following the 2017 he returned for a third stint this time as a special advisor to Alderson where perhaps the most interesting thing about that stint was Minaya engaged with Cashman about trading Zack Wheeler in 2019 in what would have been the first intracity of note since the Mets sent Mike Stanton for Felix Heredia in Dec. 2004.

After billionaire owner Steve Cohen took over in Nov. 2020, Minaya was fired from the front office but came back as ambassador for the team in a role he described as marketing and outreach. Minaya said Thursday Cashman actually reached out to him before last season but he declined to continue assist MLB with amateur scouting matters such as organizing a draft combine.

Minaya does not posses the World Series pedigree of Sabean, whose imprints were on the 1990s Yankee dynasty from his work as a scout, director of scouting and vice president of player development from 1985-1992. It was a stretch that covered two of Billy Martin’s five managerial stints, four losing seasons but also resulted in Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter joining the organization.

Then he spent 30 seasons with the Giants as Aaron Judge grew up rooting for them. He was the GM from 1996 to 2015 resulting in three titles in four World Series appearances thanks to doing things like drafting Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Buster Posey along with various savvy veteran signings.

He ended his stint with the Giants as a senior advisor and his contract ended Oct. 31, he immediately contacted Cashman. Cashman’s contract expired the same day but there was never a doubt he was coming back which is among the reasons he spent about 45 minutes explaining the state of the team on Nov. 4 even though he was not technically an employee.

“At my age, I still have a great passion for the game,” Sabean said. “I really have been exposed to almost everything in the game and almost have run every department you can inside an organization. I think I needed to be in a place that I could give back, be a mentor, contribute at any level at any time and be an on-call doctor.”

And now the Yankees are in possession of two veterans of the transaction process to add more opinions to the mix for their next signing or trade.