Mound Talk

Stolen bases are difficult to gauge from year to year.  A slight injury to a hamstring could force Jose Reyes into a three week stretch where he doesn’t attempt a base and instead of stealing 70 bags he steals 55. Or, the injury could put him on the DL for 15 days and when he comes back he doesn’t attempt a steal for a month. Unlike other categories, stolen bases are incredibly sensitive to injuries and becoming more so as teams are understanding just what is at stake with an attempt. For fantasy baseball managers, that just means every bag is more valuable.

Position	Stolen Base Total
1	184
2	167
3	164
4	162
5	157
6	153
7	144
8	142
9	137
10	113
11	91
12	59

Stolen bases are very skewed with a huge range. There are three major reasons for the odd pattern that I noticed.

First, stolen bases tend to be skewed at the top because of the disparity among base stealers. Six players stole more than 50 bases. The seventh highest stole 41. Only eight stole more than 40. Jose Reyes stole twice as many bases as all but seven players.

Second, there is a readily available source of stolen bases on the waiver wire and late in drafts. Juan Pierre, Eric Byrnes and Shane Victorino could have been had very late in drafts but produced at an elite level in stolen bases. Kaz Matsui, Jerry Owens and Jason Bartlett were probably sitting as free agents in your league at some point. These guys won’t produce at the level some others will but if you need a boost, a “Dave Roberts” is always available for you.

Third, many leagues (71%) had at least one team that seemed to punt stolen bases. Not the best strategy as less than 5% of teams that embraced a punt strategy won the league. (Note: I am only guessing as to whether the team employed a punt strategy based on how poorly they performed in each category. It is entirely possible that they were not trying to punt but suffered some injuries and didn’t try to make up for that.)

Concluding Thoughts

Get a good stolen base guy to build around. Jimmy Rollins, Hanley Ramirez, David Wright, Brandon Phillips will help you in more than stolen bases but give you a great foundation to build on. Then, you can pick up guys later on that will help in more than just stolen bases.

Stolen bases are cheap. Be wary of that. Juan Pierre and his stolen bases are attractive but they come at a cost to your power department. By the same token, that means they are available on the waiver wire.

Pick up a guy like Ryan Theriot when he plays Milwaukee. The combination of Ben Sheets letting runners go wild and Jason Kendall’s noodle-arm make it more likely that he’ll pick up a stolen base or two. Use this almost like you’d use a good setup man as a vulture and insert him after the closer just threw three days in a row.

Do not punt the category.