For much of the season, Aaron Boone downplayed the Yankees’ baserunning issues, despite the eye test and publicly available advanced metrics saying otherwise.
Then, after Hal Steinbrenner mentioned the team’s baserunning being a problem during a call with reporters last month, Boone softened his stance to a degree last week at the winter meetings, while still putting his own optimistic spin on it.
“Finally I feel like our athleticism started to pay dividends for us and show up in games and even help us win games with our speed and athleticism and stuff,” Boone said. “We just want that. We need to continue to get better at that, though.
“It’s an area that’s obviously been talked about a lot over the last couple of years, but we need to continue to move the needle and get better and try and make those gains on the margins. And baserunning is one of the areas we can do that.”
