As stolen bases continue to rise league wide, I’m here every Wednesday to help you track important stolen base trends so you can find more speed for your fantasy teams.
Stealing a base is as much about the opposing pitcher and catcher as it is the actual base runner themself. So, being able to spot which teams and pitchers specifically are being run on most frequently will help you to figure out who can swipe some bags over the next week.
Last week, I talked about Juan Soto’s incredible, newfound efficiency as a base stealer and he took two more this week. The Mets as a team are remarkably efficient on the bases, but more on that later.
Before we get to this week’s important trends, here is the stolen base leaderboard over the past seven days.
CJ Abrams turned on the jets with seven stolen base attempts, at least three more than every other player in the league. The key to stealing a base is first attempting to do so.
The Mariners stole 13 bases this week to lead all teams and were only caught once. Josh Naylor and Randy Arozarena were at the center of that with eight combined.
It would be a huge addition to Naylor’s fantasy arsenal if he can get himself over 20 steals this season.
Now, here is the overall stolen base leaderboard on the season.
Oneil Cruz has stormed back ahead of José Caballero for the league-lead.
Still, Cruz has barely been a top-50 hitter according to FanGraphs’ Player Rater because that .219 batting average is tearing down his whole profile. If he can get that back to the near-.260 mark from last season with this speed, he’ll return first-round value.
Next, here are some players that we’d hoped would be more aggressive or efficient on the base paths.
So much inefficiency from players we expected to rely on for stolen bases.
Bruce Turang has already been caught stealing more times than he was all of last season with over 30 fewer successful tries.
Stealing three bases this week without being caught has helped Zach Neto salvage his efficiency some. At least we’re seeing the aggressiveness. There’s almost no doubt he puts up a 30-30 season at some point in his career.
Now, let’s go over the most important stolen base trends over the past week.
Fantasy Baseball Stolen Base Targets
The Minnesota Twins allowed a jaw-dropping 13 stolen bases in just six games over the past week. Up until that point, they’d only given up 74 all season. That means nearly 18% of all the stolen bases against them have come in just their last six games.
Eight of those 13 steals came in two games: one against the Nationals and one against the Red Sox. CJ Abrams took three as part of his six-steal week, but the rest were dispersed fairly evenly among opponents.
Among the Twins’ pitchers, Jhoan Duran was on the mound for most – three – of these stolen bases. That isn’t anything we can use to help us stream stolen bases though because while Duran has never been excellent at holding runners on, practically none reach base against him anyway so there are few chances to steal a bag. Strangely, all but two of these stolen bases came with Twins’ relievers on the mound.
If there was any trend to spot from this disastrous week, Christian Vázquez was behind the plate for 10 of the 13 stolen bases. Yet, oddly enough, this has never been a pronounced issue for Vázquez before.
The league-wide caught stealing rate is 23%. Even after this cataclysmic week where he caught one runner and 10 were successful, Vázquez has caught 28% of would-be base stealers this season. His pop time is better than league average and he has years worth of a good defensive reputation, besides last season.
Perhaps someone spotted something in Vázquez or this Twins’ bullpen to exploit. It will be a fun trend to keep track of this coming week to figure out whether we can attack it moving forward.
Mets Efficiency Unmatched
Somehow, the Mets continue to steal bases without being caught. They took six more this week (without being caught) to push their season total up to 87, ninth-most in the league.
That’s come with being caught just 10 times. That’s tied with the Tigers for fewest times caught in the league and Detroit has stolen 40 fewer bases.
With that, the Mets’ nearly 90% success rate is by far the best of any team. Interestingly enough, they’re also the second-slowest team by average spring speed according to Baseball Savant.
They’ve stolen 29 consecutive bases successfully since the last time someone was caught. That was all the way back on June 17th, six full weeks ago, against the Atlanta Braves. Funny enough, that ‘caught stealing’ was by Juan Soto when he took one of his patented walking leads and was picked off.
Many players on the team have heaped praise onto first base coach and former speedy outfielder Antoan Richardson for their success. He’s apparently a savant when it comes to pick-off moves and pitcher tells. The data supports this, since the Mets base runners have taken the largest secondary leads in the league.
The results do too. Heading into a matchup against the Mets this past Friday, opposing base stealers were 4-for-7 with Logan Webb on the mound this season. The Mets took three in that game alone and executed another successful hit-and-run. They made it look easy.
Francisco Lindor is pacing for another nearly 30-steal season. Soto has already set a career-high with 15. Brandon Nimmo is just three bags off his career high with 12. Luisangel Acuña and Tyrone Taylor have chipped in 12 and 11 respectively in part-time roles. Brett Baty has even managed five. Players are running up and down this roster without being caught.
