Take the triples. Yes, the Yankees are dead last in the league in hitting triples, but so what? Aside from the fact that triples are highly overrated in my opinion, and generally seem to resemble a double with a sprinkling of good luck, the most obvious factor working against the Yankees here is the fact that their home stadium simply doesn’t yield very many triples. There’s not a lot of room in right field, obviously, and the park gives up kind of a lot of home runs, so the same exact hit that results in a triple at Comerica Park (and look at that, Detroit leads the league in hitting triples) is often a double or a home run at Yankee Stadium, simply because of the dimensions of the playing area.

As for stealing bases, I suppose there’s more practical value to them, but that doesn’t seem to have any sort of direct translation into winning more games. To wit, the Yankees are 12th in the American League in swiping bags, ahead of only Detroit and…Baltimore. Yes, the team that just improbably tied the Yankees in the division are dead last in the league in steals. What’s more, Texas and Chicago are both in the bottom half of the league in this measure as well, while the Angels, Twins, Blue Jays, and Royals all reside in the top six with over 100 stolen bases on the season.

Look, there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel here: The Yankees’ offense is sputtering because they just flat out aren’t hitting right now. Stealing an extra base a night or something isn’t going to help you when you’re getting six hits and one walk off of Alex Cobb in support of Freddy Garcia. It would certainly be nice if the Yankees were a true jack of all trades team, but they’re not, and no one is. What they are, however, is a team whose true talent level on offense is more than good enough to allow them to beat anyone and any time. They just have to start hitting, preferably sometime this month.