Quagliata’s perch at the YES studios in Stamford, Conn., makes it easy for him to pinch-hit for on-camera appearances.E.H. Wallop / YES Network
The name Jeff Quagliata has been largely unknown to most New York Yankees fans and YES viewers, and he is certainly far less prominent than the regional sports network’s on-air talents like Michael Kay or Bob Lorenz.
But Quagliata, YES’s research manager who joined the network for its 2002 debut, has become increasingly vital to the channel’s operations. In fact, Qauagliata’s seven-person group — Club Research, as they call themselves — is slightly smaller than many national network-level teams yet still manages to produce a voluminous amount of content for on-air use as well as for YES’s social and digital extensions.
With the Yankees this season enduring nine rainouts, more than any team in baseball, as well as four games that were delayed before they started, Quagliata has taken on an even bigger role. From a desk located just to the side of YES’s studio set, the “Quags Cam” brings Quagliata — and his insights on weather and statistics — straight to viewers. In so doing he brings much-needed relief to the network’s often-taxed studio hosts. He also is a fixture on YES’s mid-afternoon, pregame production meetings that are streamed live on Facebook.
In addition to supplying content for Yankees game coverage, YES’s research efforts are also informing other programming such as its “Homegrown: The Path to Pinstripes” series and the “Yankees Hot Stove” show.
“At the end of the day, I’m sort of a crazy librarian,” Quagliata said. “But there is an incredible thirst for this information by our viewers, and you see this team’s work every day on our air now.”
The expansion of Quagliata’s role at YES, both on and off the air, is due to more than just the growing emphasis on statistics found on broadcasts in recent years. As the Yankees’ on-field success has become increasingly due to homegrown players, a meaningful portion of the work of Club Research over the past two years has focused on tracking and analyzing the development of those key prospects, including current rookie stars Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar.
And that statistical and biographical information, like many other elements YES producers are after, isn’t often readily available from outside sources.
“Things like Elias [Sports Bureau] that are out there are wonderful, but you can see now how deep teams are getting with this information and how general managers are making decisions based on all this information,” Quagliata, 47, said. “Our fan base is demanding it, too. So we continually look to push the envelope.”
As a result, the research team is now churning out regular updates on Twitter and is measuring performance trends around individual players and the Yankees as a whole, with its work often cited by the team’s beat writers at other media outlets. On June 14, for instance, the New York Post referenced a stat by YES’s James Smyth about the three youngest players to hit two home runs in a game against the Yankees.
“We know we have a rather unique situation here,” said Jared Boshnack, YES coordinating producer, studio. “At lot of us have national experience and have been other places, and we’re very lucky to have these kind of resources for research here.”
Kay, the lead play-by-play Yankees announcer for YES, describes the network’s research component as “invaluable” to his play calling and the network’s efforts at large.
“What Quags and his crew does is as good if not better than anything else out there,” Kay said. “They give you background on stuff and they’ll connect you to storylines that give you more depth in what you’re trying to say. And to have all that right at your fingertips when I get to the ballpark, it just gives us something different and that is really valuable to our viewers.”
Like many of his YES colleagues, Quagliata spent time at national outlets before joining the network for its debut in 2002.E.H. Wallop / YES Network
The existence and prominence of Quagliata and his team owe in no small part to YES Network’s typical standing as one of the most-watched RSNs in the country — this year it is on pace to be the most-watched such network for the 14th time in 16 years — and to the long-running emphasis on high-end production values spurred along by John Filippelli, the network’s president of production and programming.
Quagliata, who had previously worked at ESPN and NBC, is based out of the network’s Stamford, Conn., studios. But for Yankees home games and key road contests such as ones in Boston, the stadium announcing crew is also aided in the booth by the presence of Smyth, who was a minor league baseball broadcaster before joining the RSN as a researcher in 2013. Quagliata also describes Smyth as the hard-core sabermetrician of his crew.
“The best way I can put it is that James just doesn’t give you numbers, he gives you numbers with context and he gives you storylines,” Kay said. “He’s almost like another part of my brain.”
While Smyth stays off camera, Quags got his first turn in the spotlight last Sept. 5, during yet another lengthy Yankees rain delay in a game against the Orioles. Network executives did not want to send viewers to archival programming and risk losing more of the audience. Needing to fill additional on-air time, they turned to Quagliata to give an extensive look on how long the game would be disrupted. Quagliata, who graduated from Berry College in his native Georgia, has carried a lifelong interest in weather patterns and meteorology, fostered in part by his grandfather, a NASA model builder.
Thus the “Quags Cam” was born.
“Lorenz had been filling lots of time, but he was getting a little punch drunk waiting out the delays, and you can do the out-of-town highlights for only so long. So it was just a matter of ‘let’s see what happens’ going to me, with really not much more direction than to just have some fun,” Quagliata said. “But it went well, and now it’s to the point where it if it rains, I’m probably going on the air.”
And, as always, giving YES viewers a good reason to keep watching.
