Stealing Time

For one of the longer-term projects I’ve been working on, I’ve been going over the league-wide stolen base and caught stealing data at Baseball-Reference.com; I’ve been going back to the beginning of the Retrosheet era in 1956, since that’s when the site has defensive stolen base data for individual catchers, although for the NL the site has league-wide figures back to 1951, and the AL to 1920.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the chart I put together for the 1956-2008 period, showing the number of games played, steals and caught stealings for each league, followed by the league-wide average of stolen base attempts per 162 team games and league-wide stolen base percentages.

Year NL-G NL-SB NL-CS NL-A/162 NL-SB% AL-G AL-SB AL-CS AL-A/162 AL-SB%
1956 1242 371 242 80 60.5% 1236 348 253 79 57.9%
1957 1238 399 254 85 61.1% 1232 368 304 88 54.8%
1958 1232 388 236 82 62.2% 1238 353 280 83 55.8%
1959 1240 439 271 93 61.8% 1236 414 235 85 63.8%
1960 1238 501 313 107 61.5% 1234 422 234 86 64.3%
1961 1238 468 288 99 61.9% 1622 578 311 89 65.0%
1962 1624 788 409 119 65.8% 1618 560 292 85 65.7%
1963 1622 684 493 118 58.1% 1616 552 270 82 67.2%
1964 1624 636 419 105 60.3% 1628 540 300 84 64.3%
1965 1626 745 429 117 63.5% 1620 704 357 106 66.4%
1966 1618 737 494 123 59.9% 1612 718 432 116 62.4%
1967 1620 694 470 116 59.6% 1620 679 470 115 59.1%
1968 1626 704 460 116 60.5% 1624 811 471 128 63.3%
1969 1946 817 548 114 59.9% 1946 1033 570 133 64.4%
1970 1942 1045 516 130 66.9% 1946 863 562 119 60.6%
1971 1944 900 492 116 64.7% 1932 865 547 118 61.3%
1972 1860 954 552 131 63.3% 1858 853 539 121 61.3%
1973 1942 976 552 127 63.9% 1944 1058 661 143 61.5%
1974 1944 1254 625 157 66.7% 1946 1234 758 166 61.9%
1975 1942 1176 558 145 67.8% 1926 1348 811 182 62.4%
1976 1944 1364 677 170 66.8% 1934 1690 867 214 66.1%
1977 1944 1555 843 200 64.8% 2262 1462 936 172 61.0%
1978 1942 1533 725 188 67.9% 2262 1471 892 169 62.3%
1979 1942 1486 767 188 66.0% 2256 1497 831 167 64.3%
1980 1946 1839 835 223 68.8% 2264 1455 775 160 65.2%
1981 1288 1108 543 208 67.1% 1500 913 557 159 62.1%
1982 1944 1782 822 217 68.4% 2270 1394 795 156 63.7%
1983 1948 1786 870 221 67.2% 2270 1539 749 163 67.3%
1984 1942 1728 773 209 69.1% 2268 1304 738 146 63.9%
1985 1942 1636 716 196 69.6% 2264 1461 715 156 67.1%
1986 1938 1842 858 226 68.2% 2268 1470 762 159 65.9%
1987 1942 1851 757 218 71.0% 2268 1734 772 179 69.2%
1988 1938 1789 729 210 71.0% 2262 1512 689 158 68.7%
1989 1946 1529 715 187 68.1% 2266 1587 726 165 68.6%
1990 1944 1787 727 210 71.1% 2266 1503 783 163 65.7%
1991 1940 1651 809 205 67.1% 2268 1469 758 159 66.0%
1992 1944 1560 741 192 67.8% 2268 1704 860 183 66.5%
1993 2270 1714 788 179 68.5% 2268 1549 872 173 64.0%
1994 1606 1141 529 168 68.3% 1594 1117 503 165 69.0%
1995 2014 1602 671 183 70.5% 2020 1331 586 154 69.4%
1996 2268 1785 709 178 71.6% 2266 1454 634 149 69.6%
1997 2268 1817 841 190 68.4% 2264 1491 723 158 67.3%
1998 2596 1609 751 147 68.2% 2268 1675 754 174 69.0%
1999 2591 1959 830 174 70.2% 2265 1462 689 154 68.0%
2000 2593 1627 736 148 68.9% 2265 1297 587 135 68.8%
2001 2592 1456 735 137 66.5% 2266 1647 673 166 71.0%
2002 2588 1514 703 139 68.3% 2264 1236 579 130 68.1%
2003 2590 1294 585 118 68.9% 2270 1279 547 130 70.0%
2004 2590 1336 527 117 71.7% 2266 1253 573 131 68.6%
2005 2594 1349 560 119 70.7% 2268 1216 509 123 70.5%
2006 2590 1515 610 133 71.3% 2268 1252 500 125 71.5%
2007 2594 1564 506 129 75.6% 2268 1354 496 132 73.2%
2008 2588 1482 547 127 73.0% 2268 1317 488 129 73.0%
TOTAL 103614 67266 32156 155 67.7% 105398 61396 31575 143 66.0%

A couple of conclusions:
1. You can see the rapid upward movements in steal attempts in the NL around 1962 (Maury Wills’ big year) and 1974 (Lou Brock’s), the AL much later in 1965-66 and then around 1974, and the big falloff around 2000 capping a longer-term decline (the NL’s one-year spike in 1999 looks like just a fluke).
2. We’re at something like a historic happy medium for stolen base attempts. Very low numbers of steal attempts generally mean that a lot of steal attempts are busted hit-and-runs, with a low success rate (the stolen base percentages of the 1950s bear this out), whereas very high numbers indicate a lot of high-risk running.
3. I think a good deal of the shift from the AL to the NL in big base stealing in the late 1970s was driven not just by the DH rule but by managers: Chuck Tanner moved to the NL in 1977, Whitey Herzog in 1980. Tanner in particular left his stamp on the AL in 1976, when he forgot his mother’s admonition that if you make that steal sign on Opening Day it might freeze that way. The 1976 A’s, on their way to their first failure to win the division in six years (helped along by the exodus of the Mustache Gang’s stars) attempted an obscene 464 steals (the only other team in the league over 230 was Herzog’s Royals at 322), albeit at an admirable 73.5% success rate. Don Baylor attempted 64 steals, Bill North 104, Sal Bando (!) 26, Phil Garner 48, Claudell Washington 57, Bert Campaneris 66, and the team’s two full-time pinch runners, Matt Alexander and Larry Lintz, combined to attempt 69 steals while having only 33 plate appearances.
4. Stolen base percentages were growing steadily for much of the period, but have really entered a golden age only in the last 2-4 years – before 2004-05, it was rare for the AL to reach a 70% success rate, and the NL wasn’t able to stay consistently above 70%; since then, we’ve seen the NL average spiral as high as 75.6%, with both leagues above 73% the past two seasons for the first time ever. The Mets and Phillies, led by Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, have been the leaders: in 2007-08, the Mets attempted an average of 210 steals per year with an 80.5% success rate, the Phillies an average of 159 steals with an 86.2% success rate.
It’s an interesting question what the cause of this is. Probably the influence of sabermetrics is a part, especially since the growing popularity of Baseball Prospectus, the 2003 publication of Moneyball, the passing of generational torches and other events have helped focus managers’ attention on not running themselves out of innings (a process accelerated by the post-1994 scoring/home run explosion that peaked in 1999-2000). I suspect that baserunners have gotten faster at a greater rate than catchers have been throwing harder. I don’t think it’s the pitchers; if anything, you hardly see the big leg kicks of the 1970s anymore. Looking around the league, it’s hard to say that teams are really diminishing the priority they place on catchers who can throw, either (Piazza’s not in the league anymore). I don’t think equipment is a big factor, especially with artificial turf in declining usage, but better shoes may be incrementally aiding the baserunners.
Anyway, it’s yet another reminder of how many different aspects of the game evolve over time, both in terms of strategy and in terms of outcomes.

4 thoughts on “Stealing Time”

  1. Note that the AL’s SBA rate has been higher than the NL’s the last two years. I get tired of hearing the cliche’ about “waiting for the long ball” used so often to describe American League baseball.

  2. For many years a player picked off was counted as CS. I can’t remember when this scoring rule changed. Possibly 1970, which might explain the jump in the NL success rate that year, however there wasn’t a similar change in the AL

  3. For many years a player picked off was counted as CS. I can’t remember when this scoring rule changed. Possibly 1970, which might explain the jump in the NL success rate that year, however there wasn’t a similar change in the AL

  4. George – rule 10.07(h)(2) – a pick-off is only a caught stealing (CS) if the runner is caught advancing to the next base. A normal pickoff with the runner tagged out at the base he previously occupied is not a CS.

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