The Science of Baseball by Will Carroll

Author:Will Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510768987
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2022-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Value of a Steal

While basestealing has long been considered a big part of the game, it’s a little surprising when you learn, as I did in researching this chapter, that caught stealing wasn’t even kept as an official stat until 1951. Even how a steal was defined wasn’t locked into the modern interpretation for the first quarter century of the game (1898).

It ebbed and flowed with both speed and power. Ty Cobb stole bases, but Babe Ruth knocked them in with his giant bat. The game’s speed was way down in the 1940s and 1950s—Dom DiMaggio led the league with just 15 steals in 1950. As pitchers became more dominant and Astroturf sprouted up around the league, steals became a better deal for runners and they led to a renaissance of the art, with players from Lou Brock to Vince Coleman redefining it.

This chart, put together by my research assistant David Barshop, shows the ebb and flow of steals percentage, but mostly that the multi-tiered expansion of the game really changed things:

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