The Bronx Burners, they are not.
But at least these 2017 Yankees no longer remind you of the old guys from “Cocoon” — before they discovered the fountain of youth.
If the Yankees want to leverage their hot start all the way into October, it sure looks like they’ll have to score runs in bunches to overcome a shaky starting rotation. They can slug, as evidenced by their American League-leading 56 home runs.
Yet as they say goodbye to the Astros, who feature their old, slow pals Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann, and as they report to Kauffman Stadium Tuesday night to take on the Royals, who relied heavily on their base running to win consecutive AL pennants in 2014 and 2015 and the championship the latter season, it’s the perfect time to recognize this team’s increased speed capacity — and the importance of fully capitalizing on that to cover up the apparent flaws.
“I think we’ve got some pretty good overall team speed,” Brett Gardner said late Sunday night, after the Yankees lost a doubleheader nightcap to the Astros, 10-7, to settle for a split on Derek Jeter’s big day. “I don’t think we’re going to go out and set the world on fire and set a whole bunch of records stealing bases, but we’ve got guys that are capable of a lot of different things and can move around a little bit.”
The most telling indicator of what Joe Girardi thinks of his personnel compared to last year’s group is the pinch-runner count, provided by the Elias Sports Bureau. In 2016, on a roster that featured baseball senior citizens Beltran and Alex Rodriguez until early August and slowpokes McCann and Mark Teixeira all the way through, Girardi deployed 32 pinch runners, the ninth most in baseball — even though the Yankees’ .315 on-base percentage ranked them 25th in the industry.
This season, with the Yankees leading the AL and (and placing second overall) at .353, they have utilized just six pinch runners — three times for Matt Holliday, twice for Chris Carter and once for the fleet-footed Gardner following an April 12 collision at first base with the Rays’ Rickie Weeks — tying them with the Nationals and Mets for the 13th-most in the game entering Monday’s action.
“Up and down our lineup, we’ve got some guys. Even look at a guy like Chase Headley, or look at a bigger guy like Aaron Judge,” Gardner said. “Those guys can still run. We’re very capable.”
Now, such an overall upgrade has not yet produced the sort of jolt you might expect. These Yankees currently have -0.5 base-running runs, according to Baseball Prospectus’ calculations, meaning they’re an eyelash below average (zero runs) when it comes to stolen bases, tag-ups and other advancement opportunities. Last year’s team registered -2.9 base-running runs, putting the ’17 Yankees on pace to be slightly better (about -2.3).
FanGraphs, using its own recipe for the same purpose, has this year’s Yankees with 2.3 base-running runs, on pace for 10.6, and last year’s with 9.8.
The reason for the modestly upward projections? While last year’s Yankees were slow, they knew what they were doing on the bases. Beltran and A-Rod began their careers as five-tool players and exhibited extreme intelligence on the base paths. So even if they didn’t help the team by taking many extra bases, neither did they hurt the club with poor decisions.
The most surprising comparable comes in extra bases taken, as computed by Baseball-Reference.com. This year’s Yankees have taken the extra base — advancing more than one base on a single or more than two bases on a double — 34 percent of the time, putting them near the bottom of the industry. Last year’s Yankees took the extra base on 37 percent of their opportunities.
“I think it’s important to score from second on a single and from first on a double. Get from first to third on a single with one out,” Gardner said. “Things like that.”
We’ve got too small a sample size over which to draw large conclusions over that data; it could just be the locations of the hits differing. Nevertheless, by season’s end, the Yankees’ chances of cashing in on this burst out of the gate had best be aided by their newfound mobility. With so many questions around their pitching, they’ll require plenty of answers from their offense.