​NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 01: Spencer Jones #78 of the New York Yankees slides into third base covered by Kevin McGonigle #7 of the Detroit Tigers during the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium on July 01, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Caleb Bowlin/Getty Images) | Getty Images Tuesday night’s series opener against the Orioles followed the exact same script that we’ve seen the last several weeks with the Yankees. A comatose offense, an elite pitching staff, a close game late, and a battle of the bullpens where every run matters. In the seventh inning, when the Yankees ultimately found the go-ahead runs with a two-run single by Trent Grisham, I thought about some things at the start of the rally.Spencer Jones started it with a single off Shane Baz, representing the go-ahead run. With the team’s innate struggle to score runs of late, I immediately thought of the possibility of the guy who is regarded as the fastest player on the team being put in motion to give you three cracks at a runner in scoring position. Instead, over the next two at-bats, Jones stayed put, only advancing to second on George Lombard Jr.’s single.This wound up not mattering due to Grisham’s heroics, but what if he didn’t come through against the lefty? While trying not to fall victim to Michael Kay’s fallacy of the predetermined outcome, if Jones ran on a relatively poor thrower in Carlos Narvaez and got to second, he would’ve scored easily on the slow grounder through the left side. It’s not the first time I’ve felt something like this watching the Yankees (try to) hit. As much as the optics look bad when you mess up on the basepaths, the Yankees are just not good enough offensively to trust themselves to get runners over and hit them in right now. With the most athletic roster they’ve had in quite a long time, the Yankees need to lean into their speed and use it to push the envelope offensively, even if it means risking more outs on the bases.For much of the season, it was part of the Yankees’ identity to leverage their speed. Through the Fourth of July, the Yankees were second in all of baseball in stolen bases with 92, leading all American League teams by at least 10. They had a teamwide Baserunning Runs (BsR) of 5.8, which was already their highest since 2017 while at the season’s halfway mark. It was a stark reversal from years past, when baserunning was perhaps the least important aspect of the game to them.View LinkFast forward six weeks, and things have changed. Since July 5, they’ve slowed their pace of stolen bases to eighth in baseball with 28, but the more stark decline is going from one of the best baserunning teams in baseball to the worst, recording -1.6 BsR in six weeks, a number that rivals the old, unathletic Yankees teams we saw a few years ago. This is coming with the most athletic roster the team has ever had, particularly with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the shelf due to injury.There have been times when the Yankees are