Why baserunning chaos will be Tigers' M.O. in '25?

LAKELAND, Fla. -- Jahmai Jones was at second base, ready to tag up, as Yankees rookie left fielder Jasson Domínguez camped tentatively under Colt Keith’s fly ball Sunday. The more Domínguez looked, the more he struggled finding the ball in the sun, until the ball fell to his left.

Once the ball hit the ground, Jones broke for third, where he found third-base coach Joey Cora waving him home. Jones was rounding third as Domínguez’s throw arrived to shortstop Anthony Volpe behind the third-base bag. Volpe relayed the ball home to beat Jones by 10-15 feet.

“Him sending me, was I a little surprised? Sure,” Jones said. “But I don’t hate it. I’m like, ‘Let’s do it.’ You don’t know what you can do until you get tested.”

Nobody from last year’s team was surprised.

“I’m fully prepared for it,” Riley Greene said. “We know what comes with Joey, and it works, and we’re going to do it. We know that he’s going to send us, so we’re going to go.”

An inning later, Jace Jung laced a line drive that bounced to the right-field wall as Yankees outfielder Duke Ellis raced to gather it. Jung took a big turn around first and picked up speed, catching even Yankees manager Aaron Boone by surprise.

“Oh, he’s going,” said Boone, who was doing an in-game interview on the YES Network broadcast at the time.

Jung slid in as Volpe took the throw behind the bag and attempted a late tag in case Jung overslid. It was Jung’s second double of the day, both on line drives to right. His first was even closer, with Jung sliding in as the throw bounced past Volpe.

“He asked me before the game if he had the green light on the bases,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “And I said no, because I promised [bench coach] George [Lombard] I would never do that after doing it in the first weekend of [Jung’s] Major League career [last August]. And [Jung] said, ‘I’ll show you, I’m faster.’

“I’ll go to the video and time it, but we had a nice laugh about it. We had just talked about his work running this offseason, and there he was, testing it.”

That wasn’t all Jung told his manager.

“I was messing with A.J.,” Jung said the next day. “I told him by the end of Spring Training, I’m going to have five stolen bases. I said, ‘I’m fast now.’”

For all the attention that pitching chaos received in the Tigers’ late-season charge, Detroit’s swashbuckling baserunning was just as much of a factor, and just as daring of a strategy. What began in mid-August with an impassioned message from Cora to push the tempo and take the extra base at every opportunity became a rallying point for a group of young hitters searching for an edge against formidable foes.

“I think that played a ginormous role in the games that we won,” Greene said. “It’s not just us scoring runs -- that’s what we need to do to win baseball games. But it gets the boys going, too. It’s momentum.”

While pitching chaos was temporary, the Tigers want to carry their baserunning aggressiveness over a full season. They don’t have the lineup to wait for a three-run homer, but they have the young legs to create extra runs and higher-percentage RBI opportunities.

“When I got a phone call with Cora [after signing], he told me to be ready for running,” Gleyber Torres said, “because we’re running a lot.”

His new teammates could’ve warned him.

“It’s knowing what comes with Joey and what’s going through his mind,” Greene said, “because we have a year with him already. We’re going. And he’s not stopping us.”

Spring Training is when that mentality takes hold. While it can be a time for players to get their legs under them, it’s an opportunity for Cora and the Tigers to see what their baserunners are capable of doing, so that Cora knows what they can do when the games count.

“Early in the spring, we’re going to continue to do that,” Hinch said. “For one, [it’s] to re-establish the point that we’re going to be an aggressive baserunning team. I don’t really care about safe or out as much as we do the identity: 'This is how we play.'”

Jones wasn’t here for it last year, but he loves it.

“That’s what I heard coming in here,” Jones said. “Baserunning for me is a big part of my game, so getting to be in a system where they allow you to go, I’m all for it.”