Since the news of Marcus Stroman signing a two-year,$37 million deal with the Yankees trickled out late Thursday night, some of the discussion is centered around his past history with the Mets and his formerly active use of a certain social media platform that recently changed names.

Another perhaps overlooked aspect of the signing is Stroman’s tendency to be a ground ball pitcher and the Yankee defense playing behind him, especially if it struggles again.

When Stroman makes his first regular season start as a Yankee either in Houston or Arizona in the first week of April, he will take a career ground ball rate of 56.7 percent.

Last season, Stroman’s ground ball rate of 56.9 percent was third in the majors among starting pitchers with at least 100 innings, trailing only Logan Webb and Alex Cobb.

In the past two seasons Stroman’s ground ball rate was 54.3 percent, a figure that ranked seventh among pitchers with at least 100 innings.

It is a figure well above the major league average and well above any mark produced by anyone who regularly started a game for the Yankees.

For example, the highest ground ball rate of a Yankee starter during the ill-fated 82-win season was the 43.8 percent produced by Clarke Schmidt.

While winning the Cy Young award Gerrit Cole produced a ground ball rate of 40.3 percent though he reduced his fly ball rate to 24.6 percent (down from 30.3 percent in 2020) partially because he struck out 222 hitters after fanning a league-best 257 hitters in 2022 when he allowed 33 homers to lead the American League.

And like Clay Holmes, who produced ground ball rates of 66.7 percent last season and 77 percent in 2022, the sinker is a big pitch for Stroman.

Last year in his second season with the Cubs following his tenure with the Mets, he threw the pitch 1,022 times (46.4 percent) and even with missing some time in the second half due to a hip and rib injuries, he is among 33 pitches with at least 83 starts since the start of the 2021 season.

Which means factoring in Stroman’s relative durability and consistent ground ball rate — though pitching consistently at a flyball park like Yankee Stadium – will make it interesting to see if he can maintain a similar ground ball percentage.

Whatever Stroman’s ground ball percentage winds up, his infield defense should be adequate.

Last year, the Yankees led the American League with a .704 defensive efficiency, a metric that measures the percentage of balls put into play are turned into outs. Of their 96 errors, which were the fifth-most in the game, 34 were committed by middle infielders Anthony Volpe and Gleyber Torres, who can show range in getting to ground balls, which sometimes causes errors to be made.

Barring a trade of Torres, whose name has cropped up in speculation recently, that figures to be the duo for next season and in a year where the Yankees dealt with frequent absences due to injury.

Volpe started 150 games at shortstop with a .970 fielding percentage while Torres started 141 games at second with a .975 fielding percentage, a drop of 10 points from 2022 when he committed seven errors but still markedly better than the fielding percentages of .933 and .952 respectively when he spent extensive time at shortstop in 2020 and 2021.

As for the corners, barring any significant injuries the corners feature standout defenders with DJ LeMahieu manning third and Anthony Rizzo handling first base

LeMahieu has a .970 fielding percentage in 259 games at third and that number was .994 in his 69 appearances at third. Rizzo’s season was derailed by a concussion that was not diagnosed for two months and likely contributed to the worst slump of his career but despite those things, he still finished with a .995 fielding percentage in 92 games at first and that his fielding percentage in any season has never been below .993.

As for last season, Stroman pitched on an 83-win team with the Cubs, whose fielding percentage of .984 was slightly below league average. In his first season with the Cubs, their defense was similar in terms of fielding percentage.

Before joining the Cubs on a multi-year deal that included an opt-out which Stroman exercised, he won 14 games in 44 starts for the Mets after being obtained at the trade deadline in 2019 after the Yankees opted to not pursue him. In 2021, the Mets were slightly below average in fielding percentage and in 2019 when a summer surge helped them get 86 wins, the Mets produced the same fielding percentage.

As for Stroman’s defensive numbers, the 32-year-old owns a career fielding percentage of .967 and did not make an error in any of his 66 chances in two seasons with the Cubs.

Regardless of the opinions about him joining the Yankees, his infield defense behind him could also play a key role in determining how successful the right-hander’s time in the Bronx winds up being.