We Can’t Let Baseball’s Enjoyable-Hating Dorks Kill the Stolen Base Once more

As an inveterately sad middle-aged man, I don’t like declaring when issues get higher. So once I say that the 2023 MLB rule adjustments massively improved baseball as a spectator expertise, you may relaxation assured that I’m not making that assertion calmly.

You know what I’m speaking about: The shift ban, the pitch clock, and the pizza field bases. Back within the olden days, a sufficiently daring and athletic ballplayer might rack up 50, 60, and even 100 steals in a season. But the response to that period has been a gradual tightening up of baserunning ways.

First, the roided-up giants of the Nineties acquired too stiff and meaty to run and slide. Even these athletes who maintained their springiness didn’t wish to run into an out when the man on the plate might use his 25-inch forearms to drive them in from wherever. In the 2000s, a military of Theo Epstein wannabes took over baseball operations en masse. These males, with their locust-like dedication to effectivity, discouraged dangerous baserunning conduct even additional. While their Harvard MBA classmates had been killing the American housing market, they killed the stolen base.

That was supposed to vary with the 2023 guidelines. Pitchers might not throw to the bases with impunity. That, and the six-inch discount in distance between the luggage, was presupposed to tip the scales ever so barely within the baserunners’ favor. The change was meant to be refined, even imperceptible to anybody who wasn’t actively taking a look at it, however simply highly effective sufficient to encourage extra proactive baserunning:

It labored. Ronald Acuña Jr. is exactly the form of participant constrained by the conservative baserunning norms of the trendy recreation. A fantastic athlete and a plus runner, Acuña led the National League with 37 steals — a pitiful whole — in his second season within the majors. But each time Acuña acquired caught, he took away a possible RBI from Freddie Freeman or Austin Riley or (in a while) Matt Olson. And with each onerous slide, he harassed his valuable joints and muscular tissues, risking an harm that’d preserve his 40-homer bat out of the lineup.

In 2023, Acuña stole 73 bases on 87 makes an attempt. It was the primary 70-steal season within the massive leagues since 2009, and the second-highest whole of stolen base makes an attempt within the twenty first Century. Acuña was named NL MVP in a unanimous vote.

The subsequent yr, Shohei Ohtani, in what appeared like the same just-for-S’s-and-G’s experiment, swiped 59 baggage. Guess what number of MVP votes he acquired? Elly De La Cruz led the majors with 67 steals that yr. In 2025, José Ramírez — he of 1 30-steal marketing campaign in 10 massive league seasons earlier than the brand new guidelines — logged his second straight 40-steal season. Bobby Witt Jr., who stole 49 bases in 2023, purloined one other 38 in 2025.

The best stars in baseball are sometimes nice athletes as properly, and for the primary time in a era, they weren’t afraid to place their legs to work. I used to be thrilled. Having 30-homer energy didn’t cease Willie Mays, or Eric Davis, and even the younger Barry Bonds from racking up dozens of steals per yr. Why ought to Acuña or Ohtani or Witt be so constrained?

And it wasn’t simply nice athletes who ran so much. Juan Soto and Josh Naylor each stole 30-plus baggage in 2025, despite the fact that neither of them is quick sufficient to outrun a sea cucumber. A brand new day is dawning, comrades.

Or so I assumed.

This is a prime 9 as a substitute of a prime 10 as a result of there’s a five-way tie for tenth place and I didn’t wish to overextend the desk. It bears mentioning that Naylor, Jackson Merrill, and CJ Abrams are three of the 5 gamers concerned in that tie. Witt and Ramírez are each nonetheless operating so much. So are the intractably pedal-to-the-metal Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Pete Crow-Armstrong.

But this leaderboard is generally populated by specialists. Players who grasp across the majors within the useless hope that sometime they’ll be allowed to steal first base. Even Tatis isn’t actually an influence hitter anymore.

Maybe the famous person stolen base vacation was too fantastic to reside lengthy. After all, Acuña has been damage mainly because the second he wrapped up that 73-steal marketing campaign. Perhaps the time has come to return high-volume basestealing to the specialists, whereas the celebrities accept 20 baggage a yr.

If you have a look at this season’s leaderboard, you’ll see that Nasim Nuñez is the one participant with greater than 35 stolen bases. Not to fret, I can hear you considering. There’s loads of season left.

Except… there isn’t really that a lot season remaining anymore. Only 5 of those gamers are on tempo to steal 40 or extra baggage. Nuñez is on tempo for 51. If he goes every week or two with out getting on base sufficient to make an try — which isn’t, like, inconceivable for a hitter like Nuñez — we might find yourself going with out a 50-steal marketing campaign for the primary time because the rule change.

A season with out a 50-steal participant is an aberration in current historical past. In the 5 seasons main as much as the rule change (4, actually, should you account for 2020), no one stole 50 bases in a season. For comparability, there have been solely 4 seasons with out a 50-steal participant between 1958 and 2017. In 2022, Jon Berti led the majors with 41 steals, which was the bottom league-leading whole in a full season since 1963.

A scaling down on the prime of the leaderboard doesn’t essentially augur a return to station-to-station operating, however let’s return to that graph from earlier. Computer, improve:

Look at that. The general stolen base try price is dropping. Perceptibly. So is the success price, however basestealers are nonetheless changing at a a lot increased price than at any level in pre-2023 baseball historical past. Apparently that’s not sufficient for the grasping lead-footed bastards who name the photographs. The league-wide try price has already fallen beneath the place it was as not too long ago as 2012.

It’s a shame. Everyone in MLB ought to be relieved that Rickey Henderson isn’t round to be upset by the state of his once-beautiful recreation. (What the heck, I’ll go watch Harold Reynolds tell his story about Rickey and the 1987 stolen base title again.)

I’m positive that appears like an overreaction, however it’s best to deal with a illness — bodily or social — in its early phases. If we wait one other decade to confront this drawback, it could be too late.

I don’t wish to enlarge the bases once more, or additional limit pickoff strikes. The Eighties had been the golden age of basestealing, however the uppers and Astroturf that outlined that period of baseball had, um, vital unfavorable negative effects. Bringing again greenies will most likely trigger extra issues than it solves. Maybe we must always conceal a taser beneath first base. There is not any higher motivation to motion than the specter of random electrocution. I’m simply considering out loud right here.

The stolen base is likely one of the most fun performs in baseball; even the specter of it permits viewers to dream of (or worry, relying on one’s rooting curiosity) a giant inning after only a single or a stroll. We waited too lengthy and sacrificed an excessive amount of to get it again. I cannot stand by and do nothing whereas it fades into disuse as soon as extra.