Will the 2025 Yankees Fix Their Baserunning Problems?

by EJ Fagan

December 2024

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Statcast just dropped a new stat: base running runs.

Unlike bat tracking earlier this year, there is nothing revolutionary about Statcast’s baserunning metric. It’s captures player and team contributions from stolen bases, caught stealings, pickoffs, outs on the base paths, and taking the extra base.

Unsurprisingly, the 2024 Yankees were the worst in baseball:

Ouch. The The Yankees gave up almost two full wins on the bases last year. Their -16 mark is the second worst for any team since 2016, behind only the 2018 Blue Jays. The 2023 Yankees weren’t far behind at -12 runs.

It’s not your imagination. All of those dumb errors on the bases added up. The Yankees have a serious problem that needs to be fixed.

What about individual players?

Anthony Volpe was a top-10 baserunner in baseball. Statcast devoted a whole section to Volpe’s ability to get a lead. He led baseball by a mile in the size of his lead off first base on a stolen base attempt. Volpe isn’t slow, but the extra two feet of lead allows him to run like some of the fastest players in baseball. If he actually learns how to get on base, I think he’ll be a monster on the bases.

Other than Jazz Chisholm’s two months, there’s not a lot of good here. Judge and Cabrera are average base runners. Wells and Trevino aren’t bad, especially for catchers. The real damage comes at the bottom: the Torres/Stanton/Soto/Rizzo/Verdugo/LeMahieu/Grisham group was worth a catastrophic -19 runs.

To make matters worse, a lot of these guys played half a season or less. The Yankees were effectively -4 runs each at 2nd base, DH, right field and first base.

The good news is that the Yankees might shed themselves of everyone here but Stanton in 2025. How did some future and potential Yankees perform?

• Cody Bellinger: +2 runs

• Alex Bregman: -2 runs

• Christian Walker: -2 runs

• Carlos Santana: 0 runs

• Teoscar Hernandez: 0 runs

• Anthony Santander: -3 runs

• Paul Goldschmidt: 0 runs

• Luis Robert Jr: 0 runs

• Eugenio Suarez: -1 runs

  
  

It’s not the most inspiring list, but lots of these guys would be upgrades over their predecessors. Cody Bellinger stands out as the only consistently good baserunner, but I’ll take average from a Santana or Goldschmidt over what the Yankees got last year.

How much better are we talking here? Let’s make a few assumptions. Jazz Chisholm was worth +4 runs between his two teams. Jasson Dominguez stole 21 bases against 1 caught stealing in 76 games in 2024, so I imagine he’s going to be pretty great as well. Let’s call him +4 runs.

Here’s a plausible 2024 Yankee lineup:

• Anthony Volpe + 5 runs

• Jazz Chisholm + 4 runs

• Jasson Dominguez +4 runs

• Cody Bellinger +2 runs

• Aaron Judge +0 runs

• Carlos Santana +0 runs * (note - he Yankees since have signed Paul Goldschmidt)

• Austin Wells -1 runs

• Alex Bregman -2 runs

• Giancarlo Stanton -4 runs

  
  

That nets out to +8 runs, good for 8th place in baseball. They could get even better with a few different moves as well, such as playing Bellinger at first or Chisholm at 3rd.

So, good news! The 2025 Yankees should be much better baserunners, not just because of regression to the mean but because they are shedding many of their worst baserunners. Let’s hope that they don’t end up giving DJ LeMahieu or Trent Grisham 500 plate appearances.