I have to assume that all the folks who’ve written about how for once the best team actually won the World Championship must not have read the book and ‘learned’ how very far from best the 2009 Yankees were.

Or else they don’t think stuff like ’22nd worst’ (reveal bias much?) tells them a lot about how games actually get played and won?

Hard to know…

…and another thing..with all that great Phillies base running ability, and the Yanks’ being 22nd best (22nd worst would be 9th-best, by the way), the Yanks still beat the Phils in 6.

I guess having only one good pitcher on the roster counts more than all that speedy fundamental baserunning stuff.
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Re: Cano. Yep, he’s a terrible base runner.
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Re: Robertson…maybe that’s why Girardi was so reluctant to give him a bigger role in the post-season despite his good performance.
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Re: the difference in Girardi moving runners…it’s much simpler than that. Last year, there were offensive breakdowns all over the lineup. This year, everyone was clicking. When you can score a lot without moving runners; when you hit a ton of homers, the thing to do is NOT waste outs on the bases by running yourself out of innings. I think you’ll find the 1961 Yankees didn’t move many runners, either.
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Re: Swisher swinging at balls out of the zone. He doesn’t do that much, at all. No, really. He was 9th best among 153 major league BAVG qualifiers in what Fangraphs calls “O-Swing”, defined as Percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone. Swisher’s O-Swing was 17.4%, lowest among the Yankee regulars.

No, it’s simpler with Nick. His swing doesn’t let him make good contact as often as most hitters, whether the ball is in the K zone or not.

Re: the Yanks team running stats….

They were the highest team SB % in the league, and they were 2nd best to the Angels in % in some of those 1st to 3rd and 2nd to home stuff, and 3rd in the league in % of extra bases taken on hits (source: Baseball Reference), so that running number mostly reflects the high percentage of GIDP. The Yanks were 2nd in the league in GIDP…

…behind only the Twins, who as you know, specialize in solid, fundamental baseball, team play, small ball, moving the runners, and whose manager, Gardenhire, is vastly superior to Girardi, and will undoubtedly finish ahead of him in the Manager of the Year voting this year to prove it.

/snark