Welcome to the second season of the steals report! I will be here every Wednesday during the season to go over 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.
Before we get to this week’s important trends, here is the stolen base leaderboard over the past seven days.
Eric Samulski breaks down the recent news and top performers from across Major League Baseball.
| Player | SB | CS |
| Nico Hoerner | 3 | 0 |
| Jake McCathy | 3 | 0 |
| Nasim Nuñez | 3 | 0 |
| David Hamilton | 3 | 0 |
| Mike Trout | 2 | 0 |
| José Ramírez | 2 | 0 |
| Kyle Tucker | 2 | 0 |
| Fernando Tatis Jr. | 2 | 0 |
| Jazz Chisholm Jr. | 2 | 0 |
| Brice Turang | 2 | 1 |
| Carson Benge | 2 | 0 |
| Chandler Simpson | 2 | 0 |
| Victor Scott II | 2 | 0 |
| Pete Crow-Armstrong | 2 | 0 |
| Nine Others Tied | 2 | 0 |
Is that Mike Trout? It’s been a week’s worth of him turning back the clock and watching him be active on the base paths makes me feel nostalgic for 2012.
Nasim Nuñez was a popular deep league target during draft season and he’s delivering on a promise of playing time and speed so far. David Hamilton and Jake McCarthy should be on deep league radars as well for the same reasons.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. only needs 48 more stolen bases and 50 home runs to make good on his hope for a 50-50 season.
Next week, I’ll have the full season stolen base leaderboard here. We just need the season to be more than a week old before that’s necessary.
Rather, here are some players that we’d hoped would be more aggressive or efficient on the base paths so far.
| Player | SB | CS |
| Geraldo Perdomo | 1 | 2 |
| Jose Altuve | 1 | 1 |
| Cody Bellinger | 1 | 1 |
| Ronald Acuña Jr. | 1 | 1 |
| Gunnar Henderson | 1 | 1 |
| Elly De La Cruz | 0 | 1 |
| Luis Robert Jr. | 0 | 1 |
| Matt McLain | 0 | 1 |
| Francisco Lindor | 0 | 0 |
| Shohei Ohtani | 0 | 0 |
| Juan Soto | 0 | 0 |
| Oneil Cruz | 0 | 0 |
It looks like Juan Soto may not push for 40 stolen bases again this season.
A theme last year, Shohei Ohtani will likely never run like he did in 2024 now that he’s pitching regularly again.
Oneil Cruz and Elly De La Cruz are scaring their managers by not attempting a stolen base over the first week.
Even though he was caught once, it’s encouraging to see Ronald Acuña Jr. be aggressive early.
Now, let’s go over the most important stolen base trends over the past week.
Fantasy Baseball Stolen Base Targets
The White Sox (9 SB allowed), Marlins (8 SB), and Rays (8 SB) were especially susceptible to stolen bases over the last week. Let’s figure out why.
Starting with the White Sox, they allowed seven of their nine total steals in one game last Saturday against the Brewers. All came with Reese McGuire behind the plate, who only threw out eight of 31 would-be base stealers last season and doesn’t have a particularly strong arm or quick pop time.
Yet, a catcher being average or slightly below it defensively shouldn’t lead to that many stolen bases, at least not over nine innings.
Three of the seven from this game came during the six batters that left-handed reliever Bryan Hudson faced. And he started the inning fresh, so there were only five opportunities to steal a base and they did so three times. Hudson balked a runner to second too!
Three others came with starting pitcher Sean Burke on the bump. That makes more sense since he pitched four innings.
Going back to last season, neither Hudson nor Burke were particularly slow to the plate. Hudson was a bit slower though and there’s a good chance the Brewers, who are often one of the most aggressive base stealing teams in the league, saw something with these pitchers they could take advantage of.
If you were here last season, you might remember that no team was run on nearly as much as the Marlins and no catcher was worse at throwing runners out than Agustín Ramírez.
Miami allowed 191 stolen bases last season and caught just 24 runners. That came out to an 88.8% success rate by their opponents. The next closest team to each were the Astros, who allowed 157 stolen bases and caught 30, good for an 83.9% success rate by their opponents.
Again, Ramírez was a big reason why. He was the only catcher to start at least 25 games and catcher fewer than 10% of base stealers. Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez are also notoriously slow to the plate and poor at holding runners on.
Four of the seven bases stolen against the Marlins last week came in the three games in which Ramírez was behind the plate. Two others in the one game Pérez pitched. It seems as if last season’s trends continue this season unless proved otherwise. The Yankees and Reds are matched up against the Marlins over the next week. Pérez is pitching on Friday and Alcantara on Monday.
Lastly we have the Rays, who were also heavily featured in this piece last season.
Hunter Feduccia is back with them as a part-time catcher and is dreadful against base stealers. Nick Fortes is the other member of their tandem. He’s a quality defender, but more so as a receiver and framer than with throwing out base runners.
Joe Boyle is also poor at holding runners on and two bases were stolen in his lone start last week.
There were no other discernible trends with their pitchers though, so check back next week to see if anything else develops with Tampa Bay as a team to target when searching for stolen bases.
Read the full article here