Based purely on Jose Trevino’s arm strength and pop time, perhaps the Red Sox stealing nine bases off him and the Yankees’ pitchers on Sunday night should not have been all that surprising.
But no other team had taken advantage of Trevino like that, which raises the question: Did the Red Sox expose a Yankees flaw and provide a blueprint for other teams to copy, or was it just one bad night overall for the Yankees’ run-game operation?
”There’s certain teams that that’s their DNA; that’s how they’re going to play,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Obviously, the Red Sox have a number of fast players, and that’s how they play the game. We’ve faced a handful of teams that you go in and it’s similar and you prepare the same kind of way. I have a lot of confidence in how we address and control the running game. [Sunday,] we just didn’t get it done.”
Even before Sunday, the Yankees have regularly described controlling the running game as a group effort and not just on the catchers.
As of Monday, they had caught 25 percent of attempted base stealers (16 of 65), which was the 10th-best mark in the majors.
Trevino, who grades out as the top pitch framer in the game according to Baseball Savant, is at the other end of the spectrum in terms of arm strength.
Among 61 qualified catchers, Trevino’s average of 71.3 mph on throws to second was the lowest — teammate Austin Wells’ 79.1 mph ranked 28th.
Trevino’s pop time of 2.07 seconds was the fourth-slowest, while Wells was 30th at 1.97.
But by Baseball Savant’s Catcher’s Caught Stealing Above Average — a metric that measures the number of extra caught stealings compared to the expectation of an average catcher, taking runners and pitchers into account — Trevino was more towards the middle of the road, tied for 38th at minus-one.
Wells was tied for 46th at minus-two.
Sunday’s outburst had a number of factors working in the Red Sox’s favor.
Most notably, their three biggest burners — Jarren Duran, David Hamilton and Ceddanne Rafaela, who are each top 50 in the game in sprint speed — combined to get on base nine times and steal seven bases.
Boone pointed to the Red Sox having “some leads, they had the right matchups” and taking advantage, but defended the Yankees’ operation overall.
Now they have to make sure it was just a one-off and not a sign of things to come.
“It’s something we do very well as a group,” Boone said. “Again, it’s a group effort — pitchers, catchers, infielders. How we control it, throwing over and different looks and things like that. It’s something we take a lot of pride in here and have done a good job with. But every now and then, something shows up and we gotta do a better job with that.”
Aaron Judge led all major league players in All-Star voting in the first balloting update that was released on Monday, accruing 1,366,315 votes.
Juan Soto was second among all major leaguers with 1,252,020 votes.
Giancarlo Stanton was second among AL designated hitters, Trevino third among AL catchers, Anthony Volpe third among AL shortstops, Anthony Rizzo fourth among AL first basemen, Oswaldo Cabrera fourth among AL third basemen, Alex Verdugo sixth among AL outfielders and Gleyber Torres seventh among AL second basemen.
The top two vote-getters at each position (top six at outfielder) advance to the next phase of voting.
