Any given live sportscast features no shortage of graphics meant to complement the action the field, court or ice, but some are more illuminating than others. In finding the difference between meaningful insights and statistical noise, it helps to have a dedicated research team that can translate data points into storylines. Derek Futterman profiles one below.
Over the course of a given New York Yankees broadcast on YES Network, viewers are presented a broad range of information via on-screen graphics or the Michael Kay-led broadcast team. Knowing what data to highlight, and when, is the job of a dedicated research team led by Jeff Quagliata.
Quagliata, who has worked for YES Network since its early days in 2002, leads a team that creates a variety of resources, which are subsequently distributed to a growing list of professionals within the organization. Each game day, the team compiles a research packet outlining trends in hitting, pitching and fielding, along with storylines to watch based on the numbers. Although the packet is referred to as the “one-sheet,” it often spans nearly 20 pages of intel on both the Yankees and their opponent.
The process is fully manual and does not implement artificial intelligence; however, it does leverage advanced technology and resources to access the necessary statistics and numbers frequently referenced in baseball. The compilation begins in earnest when the websites update in the morning and is completed early in the afternoon, providing other departments at YES Network ample time to review and implement the information into their workflows.
“It is literally distributed to everybody from talent, producers, graphics coordinators, the features department gets it, the marketing department gets it, and some of that stuff, they’ll call later on to use for spots,” Quagliata said. “But a lot of that data is good today, and it’s only good for today because everything updates. The only thing that happens later is at night when I’m doing a pitching matchup for tomorrow because that’s the only day that that doesn’t change. Everything else has changed, and we start from scratch every day.”
From the packet to the production
From the beginning, YES Network has tried to utilize statistics for storytelling purposes, bringing people inside the game through the data. As the breadth of statistics tracked and their accessibility has grown through the years, one of the goals at YES is to make sure the data is meaningful.
“We are big and throw as many numbers out there as we can,” Quagliata said. “Since Day 1 we got here, that was kind of why I was brought here. The Yankees have a history unlike anybody else, and baseball, unlike a lot of other major sports, is so stat driven, and the fans find these numbers holy, and we had to take them very seriously, and we take them very seriously every day.”
The one-sheet differs from the game notes broadcasters receive at the ballpark, focusing more on trends and the historical perspective behind the numbers. Aside from the staff at YES Network, the Yankees receive the statistical packet and sometimes include information from the document in their game notes. Kay reads through the one-sheet as soon as he arrives at the ballpark, trying to find stats that would not be publicly known.
“I think what I try to do is take stats that are provided in that packet, and maybe they will amplify or prove a point that I might feel having watched the team on a daily basis all year, or something that I heard in the clubhouse,” Kay said. “So I try to use it almost like – I think it was a Vin Scully line – like a drunk uses a lamppost for support more than illumination.”
Jared Boshnack, who oversees Yankees and Nets presentations on YES Network, knows firsthand the sheer number of elements in a given broadcast. With an arsenal of information at their disposal, it is the responsibility of the announcers and production personnel to provide the statistics without detracting from the game. The balancing act is difficult to carry out and subsequently maintain, especially as various audio feeds and other communications command attention during live gameplay.
“The beauty of baseball is people care so much about the numbers,” Boshnack said. “They care so much about the records. They care so much about the awards – what is happening, how it’s happening. Because baseball is an everyday thing, the box scores and the reality of what people are doing, and in this day and age, it’s so much harder in some aspects of the game to perform at a high level or they’re doing it differently, and we, I think, through numbers, are able to better explain it.”
The challenge associated with implementing advanced statistics during the game is in the fleeting time between pitches, which has been governed by a timer for the last three seasons. As a result, it is especially important to be succinct.
“There’s a vast majority of our viewing audience that [is] older, but there’s also an important audience of younger people that crave this,” Kay said. “So you want to do just enough to give them the information they crave, but you don’t want to turn off the older people that don’t [and] feel like they’re being inundated with statistics.”
“I just feel like it’s personal with baseball,” Boshnack added. “It’s personal. There’s something about the way that you’re taught to watch the game that those stats make it that much more enjoyable, or you understand the game better by understanding the stats, whereas in the other sports, you could just watch the action and let that tell the story.”
Moving to the hardwood
YES Network is celebrating its 25th season as the broadcast home of Nets basketball, and akin to its Yankees presentations, also leverages statistics throughout the presentation. Lead Nets on YES producer Josh Isaac said that the information compiled on the one-sheet assists in their preparation and comes to life during the game through Slack. The broadcast unit credits Quagliata and his team for their intuition and attention to detail.
“[T]hey preach about being proactive, so if a guy has four steals, boom, in real time in Slack, they tell us, ‘Hey, look out for this. If he gets his fifth steal, this is the guy’s career high or season high,’” Isaac explained, “so this is where the connectivity between the game, our research, our graphics coordinator, even our announcers too. They will tell us, like, ‘Hey, can these guys get us this? Can these guys tell us that?,’ so the looking ahead, it’s great.”
The Nets entered the 2026-27 NBA regular season with the youngest roster in the NBA, headlined by emerging stars such as Egor Dëmin, Mikel Brown Jr. and Day’Ron Sharpe. Since they are in the early stages of their NBA careers, there are not as many statistics to pore through during the game. As a result, the broadcast looks back at college numbers, larger storylines and daily trends to familiarize the viewers with these new players. Nets broadcasts utilize a deep rotation of announcers throughout the year, and Isaac credited the broadcasters for applying the information without losing the essence of the game.
“They understand how to take the research that’s provided and the stats – to weave them in naturally into a conversation, and again, with the stats that they get, it’s able to enhance our storytelling,” Isaac said. “It adds [context] to what we’re seeing on the floor, and I just think it gives you the better understanding of how the game is going without interrupting the flow of the broadcast.”
Statistics as a means of storytelling
Quagliata stressed that the statistics are a means to facilitate the broader goal of storytelling, not an end in themselves. Part of his team’s role is to anticipate what storylines will emerge and prepare the broadcasters in the best way possible, or conversely, provide information unsolicited in response to changing circumstances.
For example, a graphics coordinator will already have something prepared if Keon Ellis reaches a career high in steals during a Nets game. On Yankees broadcasts, booth statistician James Smyth will gather and provide Kay with information on historical occurrences related to the present moment that he can use in real time.
“The group that we have at YES, they’re as good as any statistical organization that does this totally for a living,” Kay said. “That’s all they do. I’m blown away — I can’t even imagine how they come up with some of the stuff, and it’s just all pristine information, and it’s stuff that’s not known.”
Kay views Smyth as the right side of his brain during Yankees games, and he is usually seated next to him in the broadcast booth. YES Network personnel credit Smyth with deriving the idea for the ‘Bullpen Budget,’ a graphic that illustrates the availability for different pitchers based on their recent usage.
YES was one of the first networks to include the total pitch count on its scorebug, Boshnack noted, and the concept evolved as teams changed how they use pitchers to start and finish games. Smyth recognized that it would be helpful for viewers to know who could be entering the game after the starting pitcher completes their outing, hence the creation of the summary graphic.
While the Yankees generally utilize closer David Bednar in a save situation, the team may decide to change course depending on his pitch count. “You may be thinking, ‘Oh, natural tonight to go there,’ but then I may come back at you because of the ‘Bullpen Budget’ and say, ‘Hey, even though Bednar’s only thrown 20 pitches the last two nights, he’s thrown two games in a row, and it’s highly unlikely the Yankees in 2026 are going to throw him a third straight day,'” Boshnack explained.
The data tell a story that the team and player might not be willing to disclose. “Bednar, without having to tell us this for strategic purposes, is most likely down for today because the numbers will identify that for us,” Boshnack continued, an example of how YES uses data “in a way that we can become enlightened.”
Statistics in the studio
Like Kay on the game broadcast, YES Network studio analyst Jack Curry works in elements from the stats packet on Yankees pregame and postgame shows. Curry, who formerly worked for The New York Times as a national baseball correspondent, narrows down the most important points to fit within the confines of live television, a focus he credits to former YES Network executive John Filippelli. A typical Yankees pregame show has just under 23 minutes of content during the half-hour block and is scripted, unlike the game telecast.
“Some fans want every last statistical nugget that you can give them,” Curry said. “Not everyone does, so I do think there’s a line you have to walk. Not everyone wants to hear what a player’s weighted runs created is. There are some folks out there watching our telecast who have no idea what that is, so I try to pluck out things that I find interesting and that I think Yankee fans would find interesting from conversations I’ve had with them.”
Curry participates in a pre-show meeting to discuss topics and other relevant material coming from the statistics packet. The conversation varies on a given day based on the storylines around the team, and he remains in touch with the statisticians at the YES Network throughout the course of the game broadcast.
“The one-sheet is the information on a gold tray, but they give you a lot of little takeout boxes as well,” Curry said. “There’s more information to come throughout the day. I would put our research staff against anyone. They’re talented, their information is strong, and they care. They’re on it. I always want to work with people who care.”
Continuing to dive into the numbers
Quagliata is optimistic that the demand for statistics will continue to rise as more players understand sabermetrics. The network hopes its use of the data will straddle the line between education and entertainment for the TV audience.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re not going into the science of it,” Quagliata said. “We’re giving basic trends. We might get into strikeout rate, stuff like that, a bit more minutiae, but it’s always something that correlates into something that’s going on right now that can be important to the game.”
The one-sheet remains an invaluable resource for broadcasters, production personnel and other employees to follow the game and ultimately present a differentiated output that takes fans beyond the action on the field or court.
“We’re not throwing darts at a dartboard, ‘Oh, maybe that will come up,'” Quagliata said. “This is going to come up at some point. It’s all going to be relevant in what we’re trying to do, or if at least it’s irrelevant coming into that game, and that’s my belief is that it’s got to be relevant if we’re going to talk about it. Otherwise, what are you bringing it up for?”
