ATLANTA — The Yankees have been the slowest team in the league by average sprint speed this season.
But they haven’t helped themselves with some of their decision-making on the base paths, either.
There are bigger reasons why the Yankees entered Tuesday just one game above .500 — namely their underperforming lineup — but too often they have cost themselves chances on offense by making outs on the bases.
They entered the day having run into 37 outs on the bases, which was tied for the eighth-most in the majors, in addition to being picked off 12 times (fifth-most) and caught stealing 25 times (sixth-most).
The Yankees also had the second-worst BsR — a baserunning metric calculated by FanGraphs — in the majors at -11.5.
“Because we’ve been in so many low-scoring, close games for the most part, when you do have a blunder and it costs you, it’s accentuated,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s extra. You gotta strike that balance between sitting on your hands, not being aggressive, playing scared and sometimes you get caught. In the last couple weeks, we’ve had a couple plays you can’t have. You’ve got to address them and learn from them and get better.”
It was evident that Boone addressed the latest blunder on Monday night with Harrison Bader, who was picked off of first base to end the sixth inning in a game the Yankees trailed 8-2.
“[Monday] was a little more direct and pointed,” Boone said on Tuesday. “I’ll just leave it at that.”
But the manager indicated that the baserunning error did not rise to a level where he thought he needed to pull Bader from the game.
“Because to me, it wasn’t a guy that wasn’t focused and wasn’t really trying and competing,” Boone said. “I think it was a bad mistake and egregious. But not one that I didn’t think it was a guy that was not completely invested, completely hooked up and really competing.”
Bader’s mistake was likely not going to change the end result of Monday’s 11-3 loss, but it was emblematic of some of the Yankees’ larger issues on the bases.
Just in the last five games alone before Tuesday, the Yankees had a few glaring errors on the base paths.
On Wednesday in Chicago, Jake Bauers was thrown out trying to go first to third on a no-out single in the first inning.
Then on Friday in Miami, Gleyber Torres (after aggressively legging out a hustle double) was tagged out trying to go from second to third on a ground ball to third base with one out.
Later in that game, Anthony Volpe was thrown out at second after taking too wide of a turn around the bag on a single to center field.
“I don’t want these guys getting scared to make a mistake on the bases,” Boone said. “That’s what I don’t want. And there were a couple plays [Friday] where I felt like we could have been a little more aggressive and sometimes that fear of making a mistake — you can’t play like that. So it’s striking that balance, it’s being uber-aware of where defenders are and then trusting your read and your eyes from there.”
Of the 37 outs the Yankees have made on the bases, 22 had come at third base or home.
Their 12 pickoffs were also high for a team that had stolen the 11th-fewest bases (76) in MLB.
Bader has actually been the Yankees’ best base runner this season, along with Volpe, with each adding one extra run, according to Baseball Savant’s metric that evaluates base runners taking extra bases.
But at a point in the season where they have very little margin for error, the Yankees’ mounting base-running mistakes have often loomed large.
“Aggression is always good, but you gotta turn it off in that situation,” Bader said of his pickoff. “That’s not to say you don’t run hard, it’s not to say you don’t get a good read off the bat. But just take a simple secondary [lead] there. The game situation will dictate how you base-run.”