Jul. 18—MOOSIC
When he looks back on it now, the number is almost even more impressive to Ryan LaMarre.
In 2011, his first full season as a professional baseball player, he swiped 55 bases.
Just how many is that? The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre record for stolen bases in a season is 44, set by Red Barons Tommy Barrett in another era — in 1989, the inaugural year for the franchise and the year after LaMarre was born.
But now, for the 32-year-old LaMarre, it stands out for another reason: he stole 55 bases, and never really knew how to steal third.
“It was just straight steals of second,” the RailRiders outfielder said. “I think there was only maybe five or six of third base.”
LaMarre has quite a career rap sheet when it comes to thievery on the base paths. In 988 games as a pro, he has 198 stolen bases, with 195 of them coming in the minors leagues. Most of that spree came early in his career, however, when he was in the Cincinnati Reds farm system trying to keep up with the newest speedster on the scene, a kid named Billy Hamilton. That version of LaMarre got by on pure speed, with one 2011 Baseball America scouting report saying his home-to-first time was clocked 4.05 seconds.
This version is trying to learn the finer points of baserunning, trying to keep up with a RailRiders team on its way to one of its best seasons when it comes to stealing bases.
The RailRiders went into Saturday with 66 stolen bases in
62 games, good for fourth most in Triple-A East this season. Worcester leads the way with 79. In the Yankees era of the franchise (since 2007), a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre team ranked in the top 4 of the league in steals just twice, last doing so in 2012 when the SWB Yankees finished fourth with 101 swipes. In 2007, the first SWB Yankees team finished third, coming three steals shy of the franchise record of 139, set by the Red Barons in 2000.
Andrew Velazquez — who has a 50-steal season on his résumé — tops the RailRiders with
18 stolen bases, tied with Jacksonville’s Brian Miller for the most in the league. With 10, Socrates Brito is the only other RailRider in double digits, but Estevan Florial (9) and LaMarre (8) aren’t far behind. Twelve players have at least one stolen base, no one has been caught more than four times and the team also regularly uses its speed to take an extra base on hits.
“Obviously everyone would like to hit doubles and homers,” said LaMarre, who is batting .310 with an .886 OPS. “But there’s going to be days, weeks, months where you might just not have it. And you’ve got to find a way to help the team. It’s like the old analogy, ‘Well, if I’m not hitting today, I’ve got to keep runs off the board on defense.” It’s the same thing. If I can walk and get in scoring position for the guy behind me, or I can go first to third and get a sac fly situation, it makes the whole offense just jell.”
It’s part of the reason why, during the team’s last homestand, LaMarre spent hours before games working with Matt Talarico, the Yankees’ minor league baserunning coordinator. Talarico put many RailRiders through a battery of drills, some focused on taking leads off bases and then breaking out of them. When success in this area is measured in hundredths and thousandths of seconds, even the slightest bit of improvement can have a major impact.
“The goal is either we steal a bunch of bags, or we put you in a defensive situation,” Talarico said. “Either way we win, because I believe pitchers would rather just worry (with the batter) than mess with pickoffs. Some guys aren’t bothered by it, but some guys are. We want to capitalize on the guys who should have been working on this more.”
Talarico came to the Yankees system from the college ranks in 2019, and because the minor leagues didn’t play in 2020, this is the first season where he’s able to see his philosophies put into practice. His system is detailed at stealbases.com, and it covers everything from how his teams started to find success at the college level — “Got players excited about stealing;” “Stopped sacrifice bunting;” “Gave players different options of steal types they could master — if the pitcher is quick you have to use faster tools;” among others — to how they went about improving their actual base running. In one area, Talarico says stealing third base is “by far an easier task than stealing second.”
LaMarre met Talarico in spring training and wanted to learn more about what he was teaching. In his younger days, he could show up to the ballpark every day ready to run and didn’t have to put much thought into picking his spots.
“Talarico says, ‘You want to be more of a surgeon, not a butcher,’ and I was more of a butcher that it was just like, I’m running every time, I’m running every time,” LaMarre said. “Luckily, I didn’t get thrown out too much, but also my legs were fresher. You felt like you could just run for days, days, days.”
Now, it’s not as simple. LaMarre, who pulled a hamstring running to first base in his lone stint in New York this year, wants to add as many base running tools to his bag as possible. There’s stuff Talarico shows him at first base that adds a bit of a twist to how LaMarre was always taught. Stealing third, he says, is more about footwork — Talarico sometimes teaches a crossover step, which LaMarre originally thought was a no-no — and continuing to move in the right direction than it is about outright speed, plus you can take advantage of any pickoff attempt being more of an awkward act than it is when a runner is on first base.
It’s designed to be system with many moves players can use, knowing that every option won’t work for every player.
“I guess the best way to think is like a Swiss Army Knife,” Talarico said. “We have a Swiss Army Knife of different tools for different times. It’s important to have those tools, but to know what works when. I always say like the screwdriver in the Swiss Army Knife is useless with a nail. You’ve got to know what’s required for that screwdriver.”
LaMarre was been successful on eight of his 10 stolen base attempts this season, including his lone try for third base. As a team, the RailRiders have been successful swiping third on 15 of 17 tries, with the two miscues coming after pickoffs.
“The more I’ve been up and down in the big leagues, the more I realize the the margins for staying there, and for winning games up there is just so small,” LaMarre said. “And it’s like, if you’re a guy like myself, if I can hit left-handed pitching, if I can play all three outfield positions, and then if I can get known as just ‘Hey, I can steal you a base, like late in the game, like I can fill that role as well.’ I just think you’re more likely to maybe stay up there instead of finding somebody else that might just be a base runner or just be a defender, something like that. Just another tool in the bag, I guess.”
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