New Statcast Data Shine Bright Light on Cubs' Excitement About Adding Two Key Yankees Coaches

Craig Counsell lured Quintin Berry away from the Brewers earlier this offseason, but whereas Berry was the first-base coach for the Milwaukee speed demons in 2024, he'll move over and be the third-base coach under Counsell in 2025. One of his chief duties is outfield instruction and positioning while the Cubs are on defense. He'll play a role for the Cubs in helping spot tics and tells on opposing pitchers, but since he wouldn't be whispering in the ears of runners at first base, you already knew the team was planning something else to bolster their running game.

Now, we know what shape that will take. After the Cubs hired José Javier (as their first-base coach) and Matt Talarico (offensive coordinator, base running, in the player-development department) away from the Yankees, the immediate word was that each was selected partially for their excellence in assisting runners. You could have been forgiven, though, if you wondered why the Yankees would be the organization to target for recruiting such specialists. After all, they stole just 88 bases in 114 attempts last season, good for 24th in MLB.

As of Monday, we can see and articulate the reasons, pretty clearly. At Baseball Savant, they're rolled out new numbers, rating baserunners (and teams) and assigning value to their various skills. One of the juicy detailed data sets introduced in the new section: lead distance gained. It's a measurement of how many feet away from their starting base runners got between the first movement of a pitcher's delivery and the release of the ball, and they have columns both for all pitches in stolen-base situations and for only those pitches on which hitters actually attempt a steal. Here are the five teams who, on average, gained the most ground in the time from pitchers starting their delivery to their releasing the ball, when attempting a steal.

These definitely aren't the best base-stealing teams in the league. On the contrary, they're five of the least strong. Some of this, then, is a selection bias: these teams only ran when they had their few good runners aboard and it was relatively easy to get a great lead. It runs deeper than that, though. For instance, among players who attempted 11 or more steals on the season, Anthony Volpe (not even especially fast or gifted in this area, with just 24 steals in 29 tries) led the league in lead distance gained from a pitcher's first move to their release. He gained, on average, a staggering 15.1 feet in that sliver of time.

That's indicative of great preparation and of a process, and the Yankees have one that they teach exceptionally well. Here's a glimpse of it.

Technically, Volpe doesn't even get a great lead here—until Aaron Nola has committed to his delivery. Then there's a bounce, a slide, and zoom—he's off. The Yankees started implementing this as a base-stealing protocol back in 2022, and the rules changes in 2023 made the move exponentially more dangerous and valuable. Here's the pull quote from an article in The Athletic early that season.

Quote

Watch Judge, Volpe and virtually every other Yankee when they are in position to steal. They will take a short primary lead, then make a lateral, hop-like move as the pitcher begins his delivery. A “momentum lead,” the Yankees call it. Others term it a “leap/vault movement.”

That piece identifies the primary architect of the maneuver, too: Talarico. And while it might not have been possible to transform the sluggardly sluggers populating the big-league lineup into valuable runners last year, the system works in a much more broad-scale way when even moderately athletic players are allowed to embrace and employ it. The 2024 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate, led the International League by 34 steals, with 251 of them in 300 attempts. That was the affiliate where Javier worked as a defense and baserunning coach.

Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner are obvious candidates to benefit from this, but so are Seiya Suzuki, Kyle Tucker, Matt Shaw, Ian Happ, and Michael Busch. The Cubs weren't bad at stealing bases in 2024, but they made three hires this winter that suggest that they intend to be a better one—perhaps one of the bast in baseball—in 2025. The rules are in their favor. Now, so is the technique.