The Yankees Are Hoping Bad Baserunning Wins Championships Too

NEW YORK — Anthony Volpe’s go-ahead grand slam in the third inning will be what Yankees fans remember most from Game 4 of the World Series.

It was the highest-leverage swing of his young career, the most pivotal play in the most important game this organization has played in at least 15 years. It was the main reason why in the ninth inning, once the game was well out of reach, the majority of the 49,000-plus fans at Yankee Stadium were chanting his last name, which Volpe said was “definitely number one” on his list of coolest moments. It restored the Yankees some level of dignity as they avoided getting swept out of the Fall Classic with an 11-4 blowout win over the Dodgers.

Indeed, if the Yankees pull off a miraculous comeback and become the first team to win the World Series after losing the first three games, Volpe’s blast will go down as the biggest turning point in the State of New York since the Battle of Saratoga. If the improbable happens — if the home run is going to be more than a fun little footnote to just another failed season — we’ll have plenty of time to rhapsodize about the local kid’s signature Yankee Moment. For now, though, I’d like to dig into the two other runs that Volpe scored in Game 4 and the events that led up to them, as they offer a window into the most important element he brings to the Yankees offense: his baserunning.

The Yankees are terrible on the bases. We don’t need numbers to show you that. Just take it from someone who doesn’t know who FanGraph is: “That’s what they do — run the bases like drunks.” This assessment from the great John Sterling came in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, after Anthony Rizzo became the second Yankee to get picked off second base in the bottom of the sixth inning:

That's what they do- run the bases like drunks! pic.twitter.com/YTaL72aZSK

— John Sterling Calls (@JSterlingCalls) October 16, 2024

However, because this is FanGraph, it’s worth putting into context just how dreadful the Yankees were at running the bases this season: At -16.9 BsR, they were the worst baserunning team in the majors. That mark is also the lowest for a pennant-winning team since the 2012 Tigers were worth -17.5 BsR. They took the extra base 36% of the time, the second-lowest rate in the majors. They were thrown out at the plate 18 times, third most in the AL and sixth most in the majors. Gleyber Torres accounted for six of those outs at home, tied for the major league lead, while Juan Soto led the Yankees with 11 outs at any base, second most among all big leaguers.

Yankees batters hit 278 singles this season with a runner on first base. That runner made it safely to third base 72 times, which works out to a 25.9% advance rate, the second-worst mark in the majors. They hit 159 singles with a runner on second base. That runner scored 85 times, for a rate of 53.5%, the lowest in the majors.

Only two players on the Yankees’ World Series roster provided above-average value on the bases this season: Volpe (5.1 BsR) and Jazz Chisholm Jr. (6.2 BsR overall, 3.2 with the Yankees). Meanwhile, the Yankees featured three of the 15 least-valuable baserunners this season: Torres (-4.6 BsR, sixth worst), Giancarlo Stanton (-4.3 BsR, ninth worst), and Soto (-3.8, 14th worst). The source of that negative value depends on the player. Torres and Soto, for example, have below-average speed, but their problem is that they run into too many outs. On the flip side, Stanton and Rizzo (-2.8 BsR) are two of the 20 slowest runners in the game, according to Baseball Savant; they don’t make too many outs on the bases, but that’s because they rarely try to take the extra base.

Remarkably, even though Jose Trevino is the team’s slowest runner, he was actually only slightly below average on the bases (-0.9 BsR), and he was the 14th-best baserunner among the 45 catchers with at least 200 plate appearances this season. That’s because he took the extra base 11 times out of 19 opportunities (53%).

All of this explains why Volpe is crucial for the Yankees as a baserunner, and why it’s paramount for him to get on base far more frequently as he develops. His .293 on-base percentage this season was the 14th lowest among qualified hitters, yet he scored 41% of the time he reached base (excluding home runs), the sixth-best rate in the majors.

As far as I can tell, none of the baseball databases I know of track the number of times a runner on second advances to third base on a double. That’s understandable. How often does the batter-runner advance more bases on a play than a baserunner when neither of them are thrown out? Yet that’s exactly what happened to the Yankees in Game 4.

With New York down 2-0 in the bottom of the second inning, Volpe drew a one-out walk and then stole second base one pitch before Austin Wells smashed a 406-foot double off the center field wall. Volpe, for some reason, decided to tag up just in case Enrique Hernández made what would’ve been an incredibly difficult catch. Hernández picked up the ball and fired it back into the infield just after Volpe reached third base. Immediately realizing his blunder, Volpe smacked his right thigh in frustration:

“Yeah, that’s completely on me,” Volpe said. “It’s not a hard read, one we practice, one that Little Leaguers make.”

To be clear, Volpe is an excellent baserunner who had a brain fart. These things happen. Really, this was an example of a young player overthinking things in a must-win game. Fortunately, it didn’t end up hurting the Yankees. The Dodgers had the infield back, so Volpe scored easily when the next batter, Alex Verdugo, grounded out to first.

In the eighth inning, Volpe again came to bat with one out and nobody on. This time, though, the Yankees were the team that was leading by two runs. Facing Brent Honeywell, Volpe lined a 2-2 slider into left field. It wasn’t hit particularly hard or deep. Teoscar Hernández glided over and backhanded the ball. It looked like a routine single, except Volpe was booking it out of the box for second base. Hernández made a strong, accurate throw to second, and Volpe likely would’ve been out. Except, on his dive into second, his helmetless head dislodged the ball from Gavin Lux’s glove:

It was a risky decision, but not a bad one. It would’ve taken a perfect throw and swipe tag to get him. The throw was on the money; the tag was not. With an elite baserunner like Volpe and a two-run lead, it made sense to put the pressure on the defense to do everything right.

Following a Wells walk, Verdugo was at the plate when Volpe broke for third on the 0-1 pitch. He made it easily ahead of Will Smith’s throw, and Wells moved up to second on a successful double steal. The two stolen bases gave the Yankees five on the night:

Then came the game’s most consequential baserunning feat. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Verdugo hit a hard groundball right at Lux, who was playing in. Volpe broke for home immediately. Lux’s throw home was short and to the first base side, but even a good throw probably would’ve been too late. Everybody was safe:

From there, Torres launched a three-run homer to put the game well out of reach. Soto followed that up with a double, and Aaron Judge drove him in with a single for the Yankees’ final run of the game.

“The scoring on Verdugo’s groundball, we’re going on contact obviously there. The jump he got to make that not really close is pretty impressive, and a good job by Dugy of just kind of battling that at-bat and putting it in play,” Boone said. “But the jump by Anthony there, a little tack-on run, now they go home, they don’t get the out. That kind of set us up to — Gleyber blows it open there. Those are the little things that happen there that turn into big things.”

Chisholm is probably the only other Yankee who would’ve been safe at the plate on Verdugo’s eighth-inning groundout, so after he complimented Volpe, I asked him what goes into getting a good jump from third base on the contact play.

“There’s a lot of cues,” he said. “I’ll tell you after the series so they don’t pick up on it. There’s a lot that goes into it, but it’s a lot of body language on the field.”

Before Chisholm declined to disclose state secrets to me, he fielded questions from other reporters about whether he and his teammates were looking to the 2004 Red Sox for inspiration in their quest to overcome their three-games-to-none deficit. Chisholm said no, because Boston’s comeback came in the ALCS, not the World Series.

“I feel like the stage is bigger in the World Series,” he said.

That’s true, but these Yankees should absolutely channel some of that ’04 Red Sox magic, though not for the reasons you might think.

You see, if the Yankees find a way to beat the Dodgers three more times, they will become the second team since integration to win the World Series while also being the worst baserunning team in the majors. The only other team to do that? The 2004 Red Sox. Now we’re talking history.

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