The 2024 running game is heating up

When non-runners start to run

It’s taking a bit of time for the “new game” to emerge after rule changes and tweaks, but we’re seeing the levee start to break in stolen base activity. Here’s an update (as of Thursday morning):

• Last year, 3,503 bases were stolen (a 41% increase in stolen bases relative to 2022)

• This year, we’re on pace for 3,580 stolen bases (a 44% increase relative to 2022).

I think we’re heading for a higher total than that pace suggests, though. I actually think we could break 4,000 stolen bases this year.

Why? Consider the pace we’ve been on since mid-April:

That’s not quite a 4,000-stolen base pace yet, but it’s getting there. And there’s still some margin for teams to chase; the league-wide success rate since April 15th (77%) is still higher than league-wide success rates from the pre-rule change era. That the success rate is still so high suggests that teams would be comfortable accepting a slightly lower rate than we’re currently seeing for a higher stolen base total.

But it’s not as if all teams are working in lockstep toward this goal:

There’s a huge gap between the teams that are running and the teams that aren’t. Cincinnati has attempted to run 66 times this year. Colorado has attempted to run 14 times. In 2022, the team that ran the most (Texas, 169 attempts) did so about 3 times more often than the team that ran the least (Minnesota, 55 attempts). This year, the Reds are outrunning the Rockies by a factor of 4.7 to 1.

Sure, you could try to explain this by pointing to roster construction. Maybe the Reds have built a roster that’s faster than the Rockies and primed to succeed in the current environment. Just look at Elly De La Cruz, who is responsible for 21 of the Reds’ 66 attempts. After De La Cruz, the next three highest stolen base attempt leaders on the Reds (Spencer Steer, Will Benson, and Jake Fraley) each have 8 attempts. This trio has above-average (but not exceptional) speed - each hovers around a Statcast-tagged sprint speed of 28 ft/s.¹

The Rockies have some exceptional speed, too. Brenton Doyle (29 ft/s) is faster than 93% of big leaguers and all of those Reds except for De La Cruz. He’s also getting on base at a good enough clip to run often (.360 OBP).

How many attempts does Doyle have? 5.

So the discrepancy isn’t all about speed on the roster. It’s actually less about speed than you’d think.

It’s not all roster construction

The Rockies-Reds comparison is just an anecdote, but we can add a little bit of structure to it. Let’s break all players into three groups:

• Burners: Runners with exceptional straight-line speed. I set the cutoff for this group at 28 ft/s on the Savant sprint speed metric. Depending on the year and your minimum playing time cutoff, this category picks up the top ~20-30% of runners.

  • Examples: Bobby Witt Jr., Trea Turner, Anthony Volpe

• Non-Burners: The middle group. Anyone between 26-28 ft/s on the Savant leaderboard.

  • Examples: Bo Bichette, Mookie Betts, Ozzie Albies

• Cloggers: This is scout-speak for “really slow.” Still way faster than the general public, but not fast for an athlete. This group includes a lot of catchers and DH-types. I set the cutoff at 26 ft/s for this group, so it picks up roughly the bottom 20% of runners.

  • Examples: Justin Turner, Jorge Soler, Travis d’Arnaud

You could add more nuance by breaking these groups down even further, but I’ll stop here for a simpler look.

So let’s test the roster construction argument. If teams were targeting players with more speed to take advantage of the rule changes, we’d expect to see more stolen base attempts, but the same share (or maybe even a greater share) of attempts going to Burners. There’d just be more Burners in the lineup.

Is that what were seeing?

No. The annualized number of attempts from Burners is actually down this year compared to last (and up just slightly since the last year of the “old rules” in 2022). The bigger contribution to the 2024 increase in attempts is coming from the middle group².

Oh, and the Cloggers. They’re on pace to run more than twice as often as they did last year.

Eloy Jiménez (24.9 ft/s) has played in 454 big league games. Here’s his first stolen base attempt ever (April 23rd):

He didn’t even have to slide. Note the situation (1st and 3rd) and the count (1-2, 2 out). If you’ve read Sam Miller³, you know that teams are deciding that throwing down to 2nd here isn’t worth the risk.

Situation aside, though, the catcher here (Christian Vázquez) had zero chance to get Jiménez even if he wanted to try. Pitcher Jay Jackson never looked over at Jiménez and took 1.5 seconds to get this pitch to the plate. Jackson also threw a tumbling changeup that put Vázquez in no position to pop up and throw. In years past, despite all of these invitations to run, your team’s Jiménez would still be standing on first base. Not anymore.

It’s a change in team approach

How does this Burner vs. Non-Burner thing break down at the team level in 2024? Not evenly. To send your team’s Eloy Jiménez or Anthony Rendon requires some re-wiring to your team baserunning strategy from management.

And while hitters live fairly autonomous lives at the plate (they rarely get told when they are allowed to swing or required to swing), runners almost always need permission or direction from a coach. We can see that some coaching staffs have started sending the Non-Burners and Cloggers, and others not so much:

Cincinnati’s group is fast and runs often. But check out the Angels, who have gotten contributions from players like Luis Rengifo (27.1 ft/s, 9 SB, 0 CS) and Anthony Rendon (27.3 ft/s, 3 SB, 1 CS). Or the Guardians, with the brothers Naylor: Josh (24.6 ft/s, 2 SB, 2 CS) and Bo (25.7 ft/s, 1 SB, 1 CS). Or the Red Sox, with Wilyer Abreu (27.2 ft/s, 5 SB, 0 CS) and Reese McGuire (26 ft/s, 2 SB, 0 CS).

These teams have definitely nailed the lower success rate part of the tradeoff. Each is showing the willingness to get embarrassed a little bit:

Okay, maybe not this embarrassed. This is Triston Casas (24.1 ft/s) and the look of a manager who did not give the green light. But this kind of thing does happen when you start planting the “we’re going to be more aggressive this year” seed in April and the wrong guy hears it.

What else is going on with the running game?

So much. What I like about this topic is that there are a bunch of angles to approach it from. Pitchers, particularly those who are slow to the plate and throw a lot of breaking balls, have a lot to worry about⁴. Catchers (and their coaches) would appreciate anything their pitchers could do to move a little quicker. Infielders, through their PitchCom devices, can set up coordinated timing plays to help out their pitchers. Base coaches have more information to manage than ever before.

It’s a very fluid situation, and it’s creating a need for coordination that baseball sometimes lacks. More on that soon.

Have a great weekend!

1. Per Baseball Savant.

2. Note: a small number of runners don’t yet have Savant sprint speeds for 2024, so you’ll see some “missing” stolen base attempts on this chart (and the next one).

Another caveat to the 2024 data: because it is so early in the year, we may not have enough tracking data to gauge a player’s true average “sprint speed” yet. It’s also possible that Savant’s tracking changes year-to-year or is susceptible to seasonality.

3. If you haven’t, you really should read this from Sam.

4. So, most pitchers.