The stolen base is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. The anticipation of a speedster reaching first, the murmur of a crowd knowing they’re going to run, and the bang-bang play at second to try and catch them is intoxicating.
Sadly, they’d faded over the years until rule changes after the 2022 season brought them back in a big way. Now, they may be fading once again.
Here, I am going to recap the season of stolen bases. Who helped our fantasy teams, who may have hurt them, and a deep-dive into the broader trends to watch league-wide.
Full Season Stolen Base Leaders
Pete Crow-Armstrong going 40-40 while accumulating over 10 fWAR was the most impressive personal accolade we saw this regular season. He’s the overwhelming favorite to be the number one overall pick in drafts next spring.
A non-qualified hitter took home the stolen base crown for the second straight year with Nasim Nuñez leading the way after José Caballero did so in 2025. Despite his 49 bags, Nuñez ranked 197th in the FanGraphs Player Rater with a negative earned value. Still, we know how valuable he could’ve been on the right teams.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. was able to save an otherwise lost season with a career-high 41 stolen bases. Still, his poor performance at the plate made him a bust relative to his top-20 ADP.
Fernando Tatis Jr. has set a new stolen base career-high in three of the last four years. He also had a 150 wRC+ from May 30th onward and picked up second base eligibility heading into 2027.
Second Half Stolen Base Leaders
The shape of Chandler Simpson’s season as a base stealer is funny to look back on. Through 40 games, he was 14-for-18. That was good for the fourth-most successful tries and tied for second-most attempts at the time. Then, after going 0-for-4 in the following 10 games, he didn’t attempt his next stolen base for nearly a month.
By late June he rediscovered his groove and no one stole more in the second half. He’ll head into next season as the favorite to lead the league overall.
After swiping 70 bases in the minors last season, it took A.J. Ewing some time before acclimating as a base stealer in the majors.
He was just 9-for-15 over his first two months and had to taper off his attempts due to that inefficiency. Something clicked in the second half though as he closed going 16-for-18. He figures to have one of the highest projected stolen base totals in 2027.
Stolen Base Disappointments
It’s ironic that Michael Harris would have his best offensive season since entering the league as his stolen bases fell off. He still finished as the 23rd ranked hitter and 10th ranked outfielder according to the FanGraphs Player Rater.
There’s no doubt at this point that Shohei Ohtani’s 53 stolen bases in 2023 were an outlier and extreme aberration.
Both Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor saw their stolen base totals crater compared to last season. Each dealt with a calf injury and the Mets’ season was practically over by mid-May, so it’s fair to assume they will have relative bounce backs in that department.
2026 Stolen Base Trends
Following a sharp two-year spike after the rules changed to make stealing bases easier, total stolen base attempts, successful steals, and success rate are all in a three-year decline.
* Note the pick-off rules changed between the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Why is this happening?
There’s always a sense that the game has an ability to police itself. The rules changed to make it easier to steal bases and players took extreme advantage in the first year. Teams then commit more time and resources to limit the weakness. It’s a tale as old as time.
After last season, I found an interesting nugget from baseball-lifer and Cubs’ coach Jerry Weinstein through data by Tom Tango about catchers adjusting to throw more towards the first base side of second when trying to catch a runner and how that could lead to more outs.
Another viable factor could be pitchers learning to be more intentional with their pick-off attempts within the constraints of the new rules.
Before the changes, they could wear a runner down with constant throws over despite those throws not always being competitive in the sense of trying to literally pick them off. Since 2023, the runner automatically advances one base if a third pick-off attempt is not successful and it’s scored as a balk.
Obviously, pick-off attempts fell off a cliff as a result. Yet, successful pick-offs are on the rise. Both their raw total and per 1,000 throws over.
* Note the pick-off rules changed between the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Some quick notes about this data: Baseball Savant lists out successful pick-offs and pick-offs to individual bases separately on their custom leaderboards. Those numbers don’t match, with the by-base number being between eight and 14 higher each year, about 4% of the total.
To stay internally consistent, I stuck with the by-base totals here. Other sources like Retro Sheet also had slightly different pick-off totals, so there’s an irregularity across the board.
For the purposes of this piece, I thought the error margin was small enough to continue forward. I anticipate all of this data being aligned soon as well.
Regardless, it seems the league could be reacting to increased pick-off success by pitchers because average leads have trended down slightly over the last few seasons.
Now, the annual difference is shorter by about one tenth of a foot. That may be so small that it’s meaningless. We also know teams can be very precise in their instructions to players, so nothing ever feels like an accident.
Another potential variable to consider, the pick-off rules changed at the same time the pitch clock was introduced. That was two new wrinkles for pitchers to worry about at the same time. Sped up and not yet accustomed to a new normal, it would’ve been easy for them to lose focus or feel uncomfortable early on.
Now, every pitcher has had many more reps in the new system. It makes sense that time has made them more equipped to combat the run game.
Baseball Savant also tracks a stat Net Bases Prevented, which is “a sum of advances prevented and outs added assigned to the pitcher.” This was the first season since 2022 where pitchers league-wide graded out positively.
Something of a new equilibrium has been reached.
Success rates are close to where they were before the rules changed. We are no longer seeing the gaudy individual accolades we did between 2023 and 2024 like Ronald Acuña Jr. swiping 73 bags. Shohei Ohtani going 50-50, or the sheer volume of 60, 50, or even 40 stolen base seasons.
This is why baseball is beautiful, there is always a solution to a problem. We don’t know which rules may change heading into 2027 with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire, but it will be fun tracking these stolen base trends next year and beyond.
