Tommy Lasorda once quipped that if Bruce Benedict had a race with a pregnant woman, he’d come in third. If the now 60-year old former Braves catcher challenged the current Yankees’ lineup to a race instead, he might have better luck.
The Yankees currently rank near the bottom of the American League in several base running statistics, including total number of stolen bases, percentage of extra bases taken, and how often runners score from first or second on a double or single, respectively. The team’s overall sluggishness on the bases hasn’t prevented the Yankees from being the second highest scoring team in baseball, but it does make you wonder how many more runs (and wins) they are leaving on the bases. Last night’s 4-3 loss to Boston is a case in point.
American League Base Running Rankings
Note: XBT% is the percentage of times a baserunner advances more than one base on a single or two bases on a double, when possible.
Source: Baseball-reference.com
With 20 base runners in yesterday’s game, the Yankees’ offense should have been off to the races, but instead only three crossed the plate. Blame a lack of clutch hitting? Not so fast! Literally. It’s easy to look at the 14 men that the Yankees left on base and conclude they just couldn’t muster a big hit, but that’s only part of the story. What really slowed the Yankees’ offense down was their lack of team speed.
Sure, the Yankees would have benefited from one more big hit (or deep fly ball), but they did manage four hits in 14 at bats with runners in scoring position. That might not seem impressive, but it exceeds the American League’s overall rate of .259 for the season. The real problem was only one run scored on those four hits (from third base with bases loaded). Had the Yankees plated just two of the runners on second base in each of those situations, the game’s one-run margin might have been a Yankees’ victory. Instead, the Bronx Bombers ceded an out at the plate on an ill-advised attempt to score, and played station-to-station in the first, fourth and eighth innings. Is it any wonder they came up short in the final outcome?
There’s not much the Yankees can do to overcome their lack of speed. Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, Greg Bird, Carlos Beltran and Chase Headley are not going to get faster overnight, so other than working on getting better leads and opportunistically using the pinch runners made available by the expanded roster, the Yankees’ best bet to score more runs probably involves jogging around the bases. Otherwise, as witnessed last night, if the Bronx Bombers are forced to rely on their legs, they’re probably not going to get very far.
Leave a Reply