You don’t need to watch many Yankees games to know that baserunning has been extremely low on their list of priorities for a while now. A team that has boasted an elite, powerful offense for most of the Aaron Judge era, a stout pitching staff for much of the last half-decade, and has graded out as an above average defensive team most years has been a downright terrible baserunning team for a while now.
The Yankees were a really good baserunning team back in 2017 and 2018, but have been getting progressively
worse since. A combination of aging veterans, injuries reducing some players to permanent joggers, and a lack of youthful speed saw the team progressively get worse, culminating in a historically awful 2024, where the team posted -17.1 BsR. FanGraphs’ all-encompassing baserunning metric says that the 2024 Yankees were the third-worst baserunning team in all of baseball since 2016 and the worst in 81 years for the Yankees.
It makes sense when you look at the team. Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, and Anthony Rizzo were mid-30s veterans who were slowed by both injury and age through the years. Aaron Judge has been cautious on the bases for years due to his stature, Juan Soto was always a startlingly bad baserunner for his age (although improving in Queens), Gleyber Torres wasn’t very fleet of foot, and neither was Alex Verdugo or Austin Wells. The fastest players on the roster were Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe, the latter not getting many opportunities to use his speed due to a low on-base percentage. It’s really not hard to see why they were so bad.
Going into 2025, the Yankees started the year without Stanton and LeMahieu, while also subtracting Soto, Rizzo, Verdugo, and Torres. It was always assumed that the 2025 iteration of the Yankees would be an improvement on the basepaths, but we didn’t see much improvement for a while. Heading into the All-Star break, the team had a -5.8 BsR, tied with the Pirates for the third-worst in baseball. A stunning baserunning regression from Volpe, injuries to Chisholm, and the overall presence of more slow veterans had this team once again in the doldrums.
But despite the quality of play on the field not dramatically improving overall, the team’s baserunning did a complete 180. Since the All-Star break, the Yankees have a +3.4 BsR in 29 games, the third-best mark in baseball. In August specifically, the team has posted their best BsR month since April 2019 at +1.8. All of a sudden, a team that’s been slow as dirt for the last half-decade is fast again.
The players haven’t changed for the most part (with one big exception), but the mentality has. The Yankees have the least amount of outs on the bases in baseball, but not because they’re a smart baserunning team; it’s because they were slow and timid. On Baseball Savant, you can look at deeper dives into baserunning. What really hurts the Yankees is their timidness and inability to go take the extra base. For the whole season, they’re worth -17 runs on “holds” alone, which is just going station-to-station. That’s the second-worst in baseball, despite the recent improvements. Overall, they’re just -3 in runner runs, which is bad but not a disaster.
In 2024, they took this to the extreme. They were -12 in overall runner runs, -23 in holds, and were a league-worst four percent below average in terms of how often runners advance the extra base. In overall baserunning runs, they were a ghastly -16, the second-worst team in the Statcast era, behind the 2018 Blue Jays. That is harrowing.
Not only are they usually not aggressive in terms of taking the extra base, but they are also very timid in terms of stealing bases. The team has ranked 19th, 8th, 21st, and 24th in the previous four seasons in stolen bases while also ranking middle of the pack in efficiency. It was more of the same in the first half, where they ranked 18th in stolen bases with a substandard 72.4 percent conversion rate. Since the break? They’re third in stolen bases with an impressive 91.9 percent rate. That hot streak has the 2025 Yankees currently on pace to steal the most bags by a Yankee team since 2011.
The fuel behind this surge is the resurgence of Jazz Chisholm Jr’s aggressive baserunning. From June 11th to July 29th, Chisholm posted an impressive 142 wRC+ over 39 games, but had a -0.4 BsR and didn’t steal a single base. His month-long absence due to an oblique injury and other nagging issues were likely at fault, but Chisholm has been an animal since getting back on the board on July 30th, stealing 11 bases in 11 attempts over 17 games with a tremendous +2.4 BsR. He’s been an animal on the bases, generating runs at a time where the Yankees are struggling to get their two best hitters in the lineup at the same time.
Anthony Volpe has also finally started to pick it up. After a jarringly bad start that saw him go 8-for-15 in stealing bases through June 19th, Volpe has been successful on his last seven stolen bases, flipping his season from a dreadful -1.0 BsR through June 19th to a significantly better mark of +1.7 in the ensuing two months. Turning him back into a weapon on the bases, despite his continuing OBP woes, will go a long way.
The third and final component of the drastic improvement is the newest kid on the block, José Caballero. The incredibly pesky utility man has brought his feisty energy to the Bronx, where he’s already swiped five bases in 11 games and posted a +1.0 BsR, constantly taking the extra base when made available to him. In Statcast’s basestealing metric, Caballero is third in MLB with a +20 net bases gained, only behind former teammate Chandler Simpson and Oneil Cruz. Leading baseball with 39 stolen bases entering Wednesday night, Caballero would be the first Yankee to lead the AL in that category since Brett Gardner stole 49 in 2011 and the first to lead MLB since Rickey Henderson in 1989 (also a midseason trade, albeit to the A’s midseason).
It just feels like the Yankees are more empowered to use their speed. They openly exploited former Yankee farmhand Agustin Ramirez in an overall dreadful series in Miami and terrorized Pedro Pages and Yohel Pozo in a more joyful series in St. Louis. In those series, the team went 15-for-17 on the basepaths, with one of the two caught stealings being when Domínguez overslid the bag he had stolen. While they’ve been better and significantly more aggressive all around, their numbers were boosted by two incredible series.
Going forward, this is a welcome change for the Yankees, who have the reputation of being an all-or-nothing behemoth on offense. Being able to take the extra base in the playoffs is crucial when runs are at a premium against some of the best pitchers in the world. There will be a spot for Caballero to swipe a bag in almost every playoff game, whether as a starter or pinch runner. The same can be said for the suddenly energized Chisholm, who’s made up for his decrease in sprint speed by being a machine on the bases.
Maybe, just maybe, the Yankees can be the scrappy ones in October. It would be the perfect complement to their world-beating power and make them more well-rounded than they’ve ever been. They might’ve found the perfect formula, but they’ll have to continue to use it in the time being to put themselves in a position to avoid an early exit.
