The future of steals: How to handle the burgeoning speed category in fantasy baseball

Every year a huge number of stolen bases come from late-drafted and undrafted players. This is no less true — perhaps it’s more true — now that SBs are up from 0.51 per team game to 0.71 in 2023.

Of this year’s Top 25 SB totals, only eight were drafted among the Top 100 players. By contrast, 13 were taken after pick 200.

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By another contrast, of the 24 hitters with 22 or more home runs (as I write), 16 of them were taken among the Top 100.

There were some feeble preseason attempts at systematizing the anticipated SB increase, but we pretty much knew that the distribution would be all over the map. Which is just what happened, including drastic declines against the grain. Bo Bichette, with 3 SBs, is perhaps the worst, although in his case the signs were there that he would not rise with the tide.

A number of analysts, including myself, noted that the potential for much higher SB totals in certain players was likely. No brilliant deduction: elevated SB totals have always been more will than skill. Probably this year’s biggest SB surprise is Wander Franco and his 54th% sprint speed.

There have been 292 50+ SB seasons since 1901, many by barely-known-if-that players.

I think the prediction has turned out to be true, but not nearly as true as it can be and will be. We see Ronald Acuña Jr. likely to reach 75 SBs, and Esteury Ruiz would be right there had he played the games. Maybe three others will reach 50, and likely a dozen will reach 40. Quite the change from recent years.

This is showing that it can be done, and more. If it is the field managers who need convincing, surely they see this year’s 80% SB success rate. That’s a gimme winning strategy, given the old sabermetric rule of thumb: at least 70% success was required.

And that 70% was always shaky to me. Consider first, with less than two outs there is the distinct possibility of a double play. A stolen base attempt eliminates the vast majority of these offensive disasters. Then with two outs, there is a much greater chance of scoring on a single. And while the old studies calculated the total run value with and without the SB attempts, they did not consider the value of one run in particular circumstances.

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But anyway, at 80% success it’s a no-brainer. So maybe it will only take twice as long as it should to sink in. I expect that next year there will be five-plus players with 60+ SBs, and close to 25 with 40+.

In such an environment, I think it behooves us to acquire one of the 60+ guys and two of the 40+ guys. I’ve never been a speed-chaser in drafts, sometimes to a fault, knowing as I do that steals will come into the league.

That’s still true, but it’s also true that among this year’s league leaders there are very few real surprises. The lowest-drafted of the bunch was TJ Friedl who, at an ADP of 321, was still an active player in 15-team leagues. That’s very unusual. Typically two or three of the leaders in a given year are reserve picks, like Thairo Estrada, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Nico Hoerner in 2022.

Considering all this, it seems to me that next year we will see a surge of speed mania in Roto drafts and auctions. I am against all manias on general principles, but in this case I do not advocate sitting it out and taking the categories left behind, except in cases of great gift. Instead I advocate targeting certain speedsters, as close to the “end of the run” as possible, but even that is not essential. What is essential is getting stolen bases before you get buried, in addition to later speculative players.

It’s likely to play out the way closers have been playing out for several years. Every year, some closers fall to the end of the run, with both the top closers and the second run. For no good reason. Really, explain to me why Josh Hader was a better pick than Félix Bautista. Indeed, on what real basis were Emmanuel Clase and Jordan Romano better than Alexis Díaz, Camilo Doval or Jhoan Durán?

I think the same thing is going to happen with steals. I could be wrong but, even if so, it can’t hurt to draw the distinctions — or lack of distinctions as the case may be.

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Another way to play against the mania is to spread your steals out, and again this has worked many times in recent years. But unless you were spot-on lucky it’s not going to work this year, and I daresay going forward. It’s too easy to get left in the dust, and the guys who steal 15-20 bases are never going to catch up. And you will need more of them, which will almost inevitably cost you power.

Thinking about Sandy Alcantara’s troubles this year and the Cy Young jinx, it’s instructive to look at the past 20 winners and what they did the following season. Obviously, neither Alcantara nor Justin Verlander is going to repeat. Here’s a look at the 20 before them, with dollar values from the Baseball Forecaster:

You can divide these guys, and indeed going way further back, into two basic groups: the Hall of Famers doing their thing, and the guys who had career years. Corey Kluber doesn’t fit because he won twice, and going back in time some of the one-time winners probably would have had HOF careers had they stayed healthy. But overall the pattern is glaring.

For Roto, it’s as safe as anything is to pay up next year for the Hall of Famers — once you decide who they are, that is. It wasn’t so easy to distinguish David Price from Max Scherzer in  2013. But unless I am convinced that a pitcher is an all-time great at the top of his game, I don’t want these guys the year after. The vast majority will lose to other pitchers who cost less.

It’s not believing in curses. It’s believing in a natural process called “he’s not that good.”

(Kareem Elgazzar-The Cincinnati Enquirer-USA TODAY Sports)

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