Inside the Yankees efforts to improve their base running with the help of a speed guru

June 19, 2024

TAMPA — It’s mid-morning on a back field at the Yankees’ spring training complex and Josh Donaldson, the new third baseman, is doing sprint drills while a coach drags behind him, holding onto green resistance bands crossed around his torso. The 36-year-old former MVP is working on his running mechanics with Matt Talarico, the Yankees’ director of speed and base running, who has worked for the organization at the player development level since 2019.

Talarico is in the business of building better runners, and he believes that a player doesn’t have to be The Flash to become an effective runner and stealer.

“I do think it is possible to develop good base runners, a skill that has mostly been misunderstood as the effect of good instincts,” Talarico said.

The work the Yankees have done this spring around situational preparation — first-to-third drills, rundown practice, general infield defense and running drills — is noticeable. Depending on who you ask, that work is slightly different from previous years and comes in the wake of the team’s 2021 major-league season, which featured an impressive variety of issues with the offense and making outs on bases.

Publicly available base-running statistics don’t always tell the story of what happened on the diamond. By FanGraphs’ base-running statistic, the Yankees were the second-worst team in MLB and the worst team in the AL at running the bases last season. (The statistic “turns stolen bases, caught stealings and other base-running plays (taking extra bases, being thrown out on the bases, etc) into runs above and below average.”)

How they got there is difficult to quantify. Many of their issues on the bases were fallout from the shockingly inconsistent performance they got from their offense. They were aggressive and they ran themselves into different bad outcomes throughout the season. That turned run creation from a get-on-base-and-slug festival into generally large and slow runners attempting to manufacture runs while being limited by a station-to-station offense — the Yankees took an extra base only 36 percent of the time in 2021, tied for third-lowest in MLB.

The number of outs at home was ugly (22, tied for most in MLB); Yankees coaches have described this as, in part, an unfortunate outcome of them needing to take more risks with their offense. Their first-to-third numbers are equally grim: The runner at first advanced to third on a single just 55 times for the Yankees, the lowest number in MLB last season and significantly lower than the league average (76).

The Yankees struggled to make the most of their run-creation opportunities last season, getting the runner home in just 28 percent of opportunities — tied at the bottom of MLB with the Orioles, Mets, Marlins and Pirates.

Meanwhile, at the minor-league level, Yankees affiliates were routinely among the most prolific base-stealing teams in their respective leagues last season. Organizational staffers and players sing Talarico’s praises on base-running instruction. One player development staffer, when asked what Talarico does differently from typical base-running coaches, responded that “the better question is what doesn’t he do differently?”

Talarico, whose coaching background prior to pro ball was at the college level, has a simple philosophy for his players: “Putting pressure on the defense in any way you can, and with whatever you can bring to the table.”

The goals here are two-pronged: Build better runners in general, then build a better base-running approach.

Talarico can talk about the mechanics of taking a secondary lead and when to get your feet moving to take off from first to third, and he can talk about the biomechanics of stride length and shape and how good form can help players avoid lower-body injuries.

Donaldson, who has dealt with leg issues in recent years, has done sled drills on the back field while Talarico takes video of him running to give slowed-down feedback on how he is moving.

“Whenever I was younger, I didn’t give much thought to how I was running. I’d just try to get from Point A to Point B,” Donaldson said. “I think over time what happens in baseball is that you start developing imbalances. We’re doing left turns all the time, so my right leg is extremely powerful and that’s the one that wants to drive my speed. We’re trying to get both legs strong enough so that there’s less compensation when I’m running the bases or on defense.”

Outfielder Ryan LaMarre, who worked with Talarico in the minors last season, may be his biggest advocate; he also noted that Aaron Judge has bought in on the spring program, which he feels carries influence for other players who may not have previously spent so much time and energy on thinking about base running.

Aaron Judge working on running drills during spring training. (Cliff Welch / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“In previous years, we’ve run as part of general conditioning,” Judge said. “I think this year we’re looking at running as something to be used in the game, and getting guys in better positions in terms of running form and shape.”

Judge, who lives in Tampa in the offseason, said he approached the Yankees in November, prior to the MLB lockout, about improving his running and developing more as a base runner. It is important to him to try to maintain his physical health, especially now with more playing time in center field on the docket, but he also said he wants to steal more bases.

Judge has above-average foot speed on the bases, but has only 24 career stolen bases. He may not be the obvious target for a 30-30 season, though he will tell you that he might just try.

“They don’t usually let me run too much, but I’m able to work on it a little bit, maybe I can steal a couple of bases and get in a better position for the guys behind me,” Judge said. “They broke down video that helped me see what to work on, and we’re using that now in spring.”

Yankees players and coaches describe this spring’s speed and base-running work as an additional point of focus, not necessarily a wholly new initiative. The practice of base running has been overlooked or underemphasized or primarily left to the “speed guys” to sort out, most people indicate. Some noted that in the age of maximizing every small inefficiency in baseball, it is surprising that many aspects of base running have been left as a box to check or a risk to mitigate.

“You go to spring and it’s kind of always the same stuff,” LaMarre said. “It’s the same base-running routine. We’re trying to take tight turns, we’re trying to get our secondaries, we’re scoring on base hits, we’re going first to third. I feel like where Matt went against the grain was diving a little bit more into the technique and like the subtleties of it. He literally wrote a book on it. I’ve been playing now since 2010. It’s my 13th year, 10th organization, and I’ve never heard much of the stuff that he’s taught anywhere else.”

Talarico was hired as a roving hitting instructor — a role he maintains — but it quickly became clear to those in the organization that his passion for base running was his standout skill.

LaMarre recalls a moment last season, his first with the Yankees, where Talarico popped into the dugout of a spring training game to ask if anyone had done “anything cool” on the bases. Not just who had slugged a home run or had stolen a base, but if any of his players had done the smaller things that may not create an advancement on the basepaths, but had put pressure on the pitcher and the defense.

Talarico blends the art and the science of base running, LaMarre said.

“He has taught me that if I am taking a secondary lead, and I get to this point away from the base and I leave when the pitcher picks up his foot, there’s not a catcher on Earth who can throw me out,” LaMarre said. “That part of it is scientific, but how I get to that part can be creative and artistic. There’s deception involved; Matt showed me video of guys standing on second base pretending to swat bugs around to distract the pitcher. It’s a science and an art.”

It is no secret that base stealing in particular has become a tragic victim of baseball’s information era. Clubs have minute data on pitcher delivery speed to the plate, catcher pop-time and player foot speed — all things that, historically, could also be recorded in a more analog fashion with a stopwatch. It’s easy to plug those numbers into a formula: If a runner is looking for a high rate of success in stealing a base, here are the conditions that need to take place for him to get the green light to run.

“People look at numbers, and I think maybe teams look at the probabilities and say, ‘Hey, we can’t make an out on the bases,’” Talarico said. “I agree that we don’t want to run into outs on the bases, but how can we teach people to be a little more successful?”

Teams understand that outs are the most valuable thing to preserve in a game, and outs on bases are not just impactful but can be embarrassing, too.

“Everybody remembers when they were in Little League, making an out on the bases and then the game kind of stops and you walk off the field. It’s not a good feeling,” Talarico said. “But I think you just can’t ask a base runner to never screw up, right? You can’t do it. You’re gonna make them way too conservative. He’s not going to be able to be himself.

“We want to be able to play like we did when we were younger, right? We don’t want to make mistakes in a game, but we want to help guys make good decisions and learn what they can and can’t do. I think when you approach it like that, I think there are some areas we can capitalize on, regardless of who the runner is.”

The diminishment of base running and base stealing in baseball has been something akin to the NBA’s 3-point revolution: You create more runs on slugging power than you do on stringing hits together in an era of extreme pitcher movement and precise defensive positioning cues.

“I think if you look at the game now, everyone is looking for on-base percentage and slugging, so I think teams really focus on improving power numbers for extra bases. They don’t even worry about stealing bases,” Judge said. “But if a guy hits a single and steals second base, he’s still in scoring position. I think it’s been overlooked, and teams have thought more about how to get a guy on second base with a double instead of a single and a steal.”

The Yankees, still, are built for slug. But they have allowed Talarico to make good base running and running mechanics a priority for them this spring after he helped create successful outcomes at the player development level.

The goal is to create good decisions. From there, good outcomes can follow.

(Photo of Aaron Judge: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)

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