The Yankees left on base problem

Listening to the game on the radio on Saturday, you’d think the Yankees have never cashed in a base runner. John and Suzyn harped on it constantly — we’ve seen this game before, they said about a dozen times — because the Yankees kept putting runners on base and then didn’t them around to score. It wasn’t so much that they were wrong, but that they were insufferable about it. But, of course, they were wrong, too.

Watching games every night, it has become a constant frustration to see the Yankees put men on base and then leave them there. It’s not as bad as it once was — for a stretch in May they seemingly didn’t bring around any runs. But even lately there have been many complaints about the Yankees ability to string together hits and bring home runners when they’re not hitting the ball out of the park.

The problem is that this isn’t a problem at all. It’s just an illusion created by the Yankees putting so many men on base in the first place. Their team .346 OBP ranks second in the AL, and is 24 points better than league average. That is, they put considerably more runners on base than other teams, so they’re working with a different baseline. There will necessarily be a lot of runners left on base, because there are so many runners on base in the first place.

To illustrate the Yankees’ actual success with runners on base, we can turn to their rate of converting runners into runs. Their 32 percent run scoring rate ranks second in the AL, behind only Boston. Most teams are within two points of the league average 30 percent, with Boston outlying at the top and Anaheim outlying at the bottom. They’re hitting .264 with runners in scoring position, which might not seem good, but which is fifth in the AL, and 10 points above league average. In other words, there might be room for improvement, but there’s not that much.

This is an instance where the stats can put into perspective something that gets obscured on a micro level. We watch every game, and while watching we feel great frustration when the Yankees fail to cash in base runners. But overall they’ve actually fared well in this aspect of the game. They’re putting more runners on than their peers, and they’re bringing them around to score at a greater rate. Sure, the home runs help, but that’s just one way of scoring runs. When taken together, the Yanks are still sitting pretty on offense.