You're Not Imagining It: Seiya Suzuki is Bad at Sliding

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The Cubs aren’t as good a baserunning team this season as they were last season. In fact, in all likelihood, they are going to post their worst season on the bases since 2021, according to the baserunning runs statistic at Baseball Savant. By that framework's reckoning, they've been worth 5 baserunning runs this season, which is seventh in baseball. Last season, their 8 baserunning runs was fifth in MLB, and they were third in 2024, having been worth 14 runs on the bases.

We’re not talking about a massive difference. In fact, it's well worth noting that Baseball Reference (which uses slightly different methods to measure baserunning) has them at 10 baserunning runs this year, leading the league and exceeding their 4 from last year. Still, I thought this was somewhat curious, given that the Cubs have had mostly the same personnel for those three seasons. One thing on which the metrics agree is that this year's team is downright pedestrian, except for Pete Crow-Armstrong, so someone else on the roster must be slipping a bit.

The culprit behind the decrease this season has been Seiya Suzuki, among other players. Last season, the Japanese outfielder was worth -1 runs on the bases. This year, he is down to -3, which is 11th-worst among qualified players.

I first noticed this stat on Tuesday night, probably an hour or so before this happened:

Suzuki beat the throw to the base, but was out because he overslid the bag. Did that feel a little familiar to anybody else? It should. This also happened, just last month:

That safe call was challenged by the Yankees, and of course, the call was overturned. Suzuki slid off the base.

Does anyone else remember this play from June?

I think there was a case to be made for just running through home plate, and it doesn’t look like anyone is directing Suzuki on where to slide from behind the plate. (Right at the end of the clip, Nico Hoerner appears in the bottom right corner. He was the on-deck batter, and it's likely he was giving Suzuki direction from offscreen, given where he'd placed himself. The position wasn't perfect for reading the play or communicating to his teammate, though.) Even so, I can’t help but think that a well-executed headfirst slide would have resulted in him being safe. A dive to the outside of the base would have forced the catcher to bring the tag down into the runner, rather than just applying the tag at the level at which he caught the ball, and that just might have bought Suzuki the extra quarter-second or so that he needed to get in there.

Those three plays, alone, are responsible for a majority of Suzuki’s negative baserunning value this season. It feels like all three could have been avoided with a headfirst slide, or even just a better feetfirst slide. At first, I wondered if he's always been bad at this, and I had just never noticed. Then, I remembered that he missed the start of the season after sustaining an injury in the World Baseball Classic. The injury was on this play:

There’s a headfirst slide! I don’t want to presume to know his mind, but it’s very possible that this has informed the way they he has slid (or hasn’t) this season. So, I went back into some old footage to see if he used to be any better at this. You be the judge:

There he is sliding off the base way back in 2022. And here’s one more, for good measure, from last season. He slid feetfirst, and was eventually called out on the replay because Xander Bogaerts tagged him on his helmet. Despite sliding feet first, Suzuki only first contacted the base with his hands, when his feet were well past the base, on the right-hand side. Seems to me like another instance where a better slide might have generated a better result:

I’m not sure that Suzuki is nervous to slide headfirst, so much as he's just not very good at sliding in general. I can’t prove this. I’d have to go through a lot of other mundane baserunning footage to do so, and the evidence would surely be muddled, anyway. But it sure feels like he's out as a result of a poor slide more often than anyone else on the Cubs. This season, at least, it's cost the team dearly on three separate occasions. To pay homage to Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb, that might not feel like a lot, but it is weird that it’s happened thrice.

What we can quantify is that those three times have resulted in Suzuki grading out as one of the least valuable baserunners in baseball. Sliding is hard, and it can be dangerous! He’s experienced both of those things in just one season. I sympathize with that. But it sure can be frustrating to watch sometimes.