COLLINS: RailRiders off to quick start with speed on basepaths

MOOSIC

In so many ways in baseball these days, 90 feet is harder than ever to come by.

League-wide batting averages in the Major Leagues that didn’t dip below .260 in the first decade of the 2000s have not been above .250 since 2019. In the first month of the 2024 season, major leaguers are hitting a combined .240; That’s just one point better than the all-time low of .239 set in 1908, during the depths of the dead-ball era.

Doubles per game are on pace to hit 30-plus-year lows. Same goes for on-base-plus-slugging percentage, which at a paltry .699 heading into the weekend is challenging the first sub-.700 mark since 1989.

So it stands to reason organizations are trying to get a bit more creative than usual to get from one base to the next, to turn walks into doubles, to reap the benefits of an old standby in a day and age when it is only beginning to come back into style.

The team using this new style best might have been considered just a few years ago to be the least likely to even attempt it. The Triple-A affiliate of baseball’s most home run-happy franchise, the famed Bronx Bombers.

Entering play this week, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders ranked 16th in the 20-team International League in hits. Their .756 OPS is smack dab in the middle of the league, thanks in part to a .405 slugging percentage that rates just 12th. Only three teams in the league have struck out more, too.

Despite that statistical mediocrity, the RailRiders rank eighth in the league in the second-most important metric in the game: Runs scored (and they were closer to fifth place than they were ninth). And in the most-important stat — wins — nobody is better.

There’s also another stat in which the RailRiders lead the IL, stolen bases, and throughout the season’s early stages, they feel their determination to cause havoc on the basepaths consistently drives the offense to a different level of potency.

“As a baserunner when we get on base,” feisty utility man Caleb Durbin said, “all we’re thinking about is getting extra 90s.”

Seems like it’s what this group does best, too.

The RailRiders entered the final three games of their six-game visit to Durham with 42 stolen bases in 51 attempts through 23 games. That puts the team at an 82.4 percent success rate, firmly over the Yankees’ 80 percent threshold for determining whether the risk of attempting the swipe is worth the trouble.

Really though, most of that success is attributed to the speed, tenacity — and, in no small part, confidence — of Durbin and fellow speedster Brandon Lockridge. Durbin’s 12 steals lead the league, and Lockridge’s 11 are good for second. Combined, they’ve been caught just once.

Obviously, both players have wheels. Durbin stole 39 bases in his college career, while Lockridge nabbed 37 bags in 43 attempts. But they both credited the same source for becoming veritable base-running mavens at the professional level. Surprisingly, it’s the New York Yankees, the organization that has the reputation for digging the long ball above all else when it comes to building an offense.

But in 2022, a few things began changing in baseball, and it started in the minors.

The pitch clock that descended upon the majors in 2023 got its start long before that in places like PNC Field, as did the slightly bigger bases that are now common around the game. Bases that for ages were 15 inches square suddenly were 18 inches, and that gave people like Matt Talarico ideas.

The Yankees’ organizational baserunning coordinator understood the game might be changing. While the Moneyball philosophy of the early 2000s largely took base stealing away from the game — the “outs are too precious to risk” mantra — the rules changes led to a rethinking of convention.

Talarico became responsible for an all-around reshaping of the Yankees’ approach to base-stealing, from the momentum leads and timing jumps that famously helped then-shortstop prospect Anthony Volpe go from 33 stolen bases in 2021 to 50 and mega-prospect status in 2022, to enhanced speed training and detailed reports on opposing batteries’ pop times.

“Our scouting reports are nails,” Lockridge said. “The way he kind of broke everything down, shared information with us, he’s very transparent with what makes us a good type of runner. We have so much information that basically gives us a trust. It’s like, ‘Look, you can be really good at this.’ Then there are systems in place to work on your stolen base stuff. Tali is constantly communicating with us, telling us, ‘Good job.’ He motivates us. Then to see it coming to work in the game and be successful stealing, it’s pretty awesome.”

Durbin called the Yankees’ approach to stolen bases “low risk and high reward.”

But, the benefits don’t just manifest in the steals column on a stat sheet, they insist.

With managing the pitch clock and focusing on making pitches to hitters already on their plate, Lockridge and Durbin say the added responsibility of monitoring dogged running games have led to noticeably more scattered approaches from opposing hurlers.

Pace needs to be quicker, Durbin said. So, it’s easier for pitchers to get into the rhythm of focusing on the plate, which makes their job easier on the bases. But the ones who focus too much on what guys like Durbin and Lockridge want to do on the bases also risk missing spots with their pitchers. And that, obviously, benefits hitters.

“We’ve seen it where they’re distracted and leaving good pitches for other guys to hit,” Lockridge said. “It’s the whole situation of being a threat on the bases helps our team. Certain guys, it rattles more than others. But it’s very obvious. If you’re on first base and you notice the guy is looking at you a few times, there have been multiple times this season where the next batter was a four-pitch walk because he just can’t control being in two places at one time with his attention. It’s cool to see.”

Unless you’re an opposing pitcher, of course. It’s a big reason why the RailRiders have beaten so many of them this season.

DONNIE COLLINS is a sports columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@scrantontimes.com and follow him @DonnieCollinsTT on X.