Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
August 26, 2007
Better Stealing

The Number Guy points out that the stolen base success rate this season is the highest of all time:

Overall, major-league teams this year have been successful on 74.6% of stolen-base attempts. That's the highest rate in the 87 years since the American League began recording caught-stealing stats (the National League followed suit in 1951). Dan Fox, a writer for the baseball-research outfit Baseball Prospectus, crunched the historical numbers for me and said the record-setting pace is evidence of "an ever-increasing level of play" in the majors, a trend he outlined in an article this January. (The success rate last year was 71.4%.) Mr. Fox also cited several other possible explanations, including that baserunners' speed is improving more quickly than catchers' throwing ability; and decreasing reliance on hit-and-run plays, which often result in failed steal attempts.

The successful thievery may also reflect better managing. Baseball's number-crunchers have long argued that the stolen base is a weapon that tends to backfire in the hands of those who misuse it, because the cost of an out generally far outweighs the increased benefit of reaching second base. (Though there are exceptions, such as in the late innings of close games -- I'm thinking of a certain famous 2004 postseason steal.) But in general, as Baseball Prospectus writer Joe Sheehan wrote in 2004, "If you're stealing at less than a 75% success rate, you're better off never going at all."

Stolen base attempts are lowest they've been since the early 1970s, after a fairly steady decline since the height of attempts in 1987. In that season, major league teams average 197 attempts. In 2006, that average was 129, and in 2007 the pace should come close to that. Teams are more selective in their attempts, so it's not surprising that they do a better job of grabbing a base. If we ever see offense go back to the pre-1993 level, we'll see attempts rise up again, and the SB% fall. Still, it's nice to see sabermetric research adopted into the game.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:41 PM | Base Running | TrackBack (0)
Comments

David, I agree about the number of attempts but in response to a commenter on that post I said:
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Matt, there have been fewer attempts in recent years, averaging about 130 per team, whereas in the 1990s it was around 165 and in the 1980s more like 180.

However, the 1980s were a high point and before then attempts had increased from the early 1950s into the 1970s going from 80 to 105 to 155 in those three decades. But as the graph shows the success rate has steadily climbed through it all which is what pointed me more towards a more systemic factor like an increase in the level of play.

Posted by: DanAgonistes at August 27, 2007 10:47 AM
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