A couple of weeks in the past, I wrote about Ryan McMahon’s first stolen base of the season. McMahon, whose dash pace was lately downgraded from the nineteenth percentile to the 18th, managed that first bag by the use of a delayed steal. By utterly dismissing McMahon as a risk, the Pirates offered him with an ideal storm of alternative. He took an unlimited lead off third base as a result of nobody bothered to carry him on, and he waited till catcher Yasmani Grandal unleashed a lollipop again to the pitcher, then waltzed residence.
The place did McMahon, who had been caught stealing 4 instances to that time within the season, get the concept for such a brazen daylight theft? Most likely from Garrett Stubbs, who had executed the identical transfer just some weeks prior, stealing third base proper from beneath McMahon’s nostril. Stubbs didn’t get the identical gargantuan lead that McMahon did, nor did he get to benefit from a catcher’s large, sluggish rainbow tosses again to the pitcher. He merely went as a result of he noticed that catcher Jacob Stallings was paying him no consideration in any way.
On Monday, the Rockies had been concerned in yet one more delayed steal. After strolling within the backside of the second inning, main league stolen base chief Elly De La Cruz one way or the other waited two complete pitches earlier than taking off for second as Elias Díaz tossed the ball again to Ryan Feltner.
This newest delayed steal was very totally different from the primary two. McMahon is extraordinarily sluggish — and Stubbs, whereas not sluggish, is a catcher — however everybody within the ballpark was conscious that De La Cruz would doubtless attempt to take second. Each broadcast crews had been speaking about the specter of a steal and each feeds made positive to chop to pictures of De La Cruz’s lead. Whereas Díaz has one of many faster arms within the league, Feltner is extraordinarily sluggish to the plate. He has allowed 20 stolen bases this season, second solely to Corbin Burnes with 24. Díaz stared De La Cruz down earlier than returning the ball to Feltner after the primary pitch, and Feltner tried a pickoff earlier than delivering the second pitch. None of that mattered in opposition to a risk like De La Cruz, however I nonetheless discovered it shocking that he opted for a delayed steal contemplating that with a pitcher like Feltner on the mound, a traditional stolen base try was roughly a positive factor.
De La Cruz, being De La Cruz, stole third base 4 pitches later; then one pitch after that, he was caught stealing residence on a first-and-third steal try as a result of Díaz (legally) blocked residence plate. Sam Miller wrote concerning the rise of first-and-third steals again in February after which once more this weekend. “So long as I’ve been baseballing,” he wrote, “the first-and-third state of affairs has been what separated the professionals from the amateurs.” That’s now not the case. Sam calculated that in Might and June, the runner on first took off roughly 14% of the time, in comparison with 10.1% in 2023 and 6.6% within the 2010s. After watching all of these performs, he concluded that defenses nonetheless aren’t actually positive tips on how to deal with that state of affairs.
Very like first-and-third steals, delayed stealing has traditionally been reserved for novice ball. As a result of it’s a troublesome factor to seek for, I’m unsure whether or not they’ve been occurring extra usually too or whether or not I simply occur to have seen a cluster. Both method, this cluster made me wonder if baserunners ought to be pulling this transfer extra usually. In spite of everything, the three that we’ve seen couldn’t have been any simpler. Solely one in every of them even drew a throw, and that was a play when everybody knew a stolen base try was doubtless. It’s true that McMahon’s steal of residence got here when no person was paying him the slightest consideration and the catcher returned the ball to the pitcher like a grandfather pitching horseshoes, however Stubbs isn’t precisely a burner both, and his got here on a traditional throw from the catcher, following a pitch the place each the pitcher and the shortstop had been making an actual effort to maintain him from getting too large a lead. Possibly that is simpler than we understand.
To be able to get a way of how usually these alternatives are presenting themselves, I went by footage of each sport from Monday evening, gauging how attentive the catchers had been once they returned the ball to the pitcher. The place potential, I selected conditions the place the baserunner possessed sufficient pace to be of concern.
The first technique for a catcher to make sure the runner doesn’t try a delayed steal is to easily look their method instantly after receiving the pitch. More often than not, this transfer is perfunctory, and it consists of nothing greater than a slight look. From the appears of it, the movement is so automated that I doubt the catcher would register that something was flawed even when the runner had been testing the boundaries of their secondary lead and edging towards the subsequent bag.
Nonetheless, just a few catchers actually did take the time to make their level. It’s simply an additional quarter of a second or so, however I believe that makes a world of distinction. Nothing makes you’re feeling fairly so responsible as the feeling of being X-rayed by a pair of significantly suspicious eyes. Ryan Jeffers, Joey Bart, and Bo Naylor all took that additional beat simply to guarantee that the base-stealing threats on first felt the worry of God. Most impressively, Detroit’s Jake Rogers not solely stared down the runner however fired a fastball again to the pitcher. The runner he was so nervous about? Naylor, whose thirty fifth percentile dash pace makes him sooner than McMahon in the identical method {that a} turtle is quicker than a rock that appears like a turtle.
That left just a few catchers who actually didn’t look over on the runner in any respect. Logan O’Hoppe, Keibert Ruiz, and Willson Contreras by no means a lot as glanced on the runner, and Martín Maldonado mixed that indifference with a rainbow toss that took 1.3 seconds to go from his hand to Chris Flexen’s glove. Even a rock that appears like a turtle may have swiped the subsequent bag in that state of affairs.
This was a small pattern and an especially unscientific examine, however it does appear to be the catchers had been cut up into three roughly even-sized teams: Those that actually did take note of the runner, these whose consideration appeared largely performative, and those that paid no consideration to the runner in any respect. As Stubbs confirmed us, it’s potential to run on the throw when the catcher falls into both the second group or the third, and it doesn’t take top-end pace. If swiping bases this manner had been to change into extra frequent, similar to the first-and-third steal play, then catchers would absolutely develop extra vigilant, however that clearly hasn’t occurred but.
The apparent danger right here is that the catcher will acknowledge what you’re attempting to do, and your goose will probably be cooked. Not solely will you be out by a mile, you’ll be embarrassed, and that may be a robust deterrent. Nonetheless, there are just a few actual advantages to stealing this manner. First, you’re not distracting the batter throughout the pitch. Second, catching the runner requires a relay. The pitcher and infielder want to acknowledge what’s occurring, then the pitcher wants to show and hearth a strike to the infielder, who must get there in time to put a tag. Third is the factor of shock. The pitcher must recover from their shock, and pitchers are notoriously sketchy in relation to throwing to a base to catch a runner fairly than executing a pitch.
Extra importantly, you’ll be able to choose your spots based mostly on what the catcher is doing. De La Cruz can run just about each time he needs, however McMahon and Stubbs had been profiting from patterns that they’d acknowledged a number of pitches earlier, conditions that positive appear to occur fairly steadily. The wildest half about McMahon’s steal of residence had nothing to do with him; it was the truth that even after the play, Grandal continued lobbing the ball again to the pitcher with runners on base. These alternatives will proceed to current themselves, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see runners benefit from them extra usually.
