Rounding Third: Are Rabbits Worth the Cost?

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Updated on August 13, 2018 12:49PM EST

"Watership Down" was the first novel I read as a kid – it was assigned to me in the fourth grade at Grandville Elementary School in Indianapolis. Although I have since long forgotten many of the details of the plot or even the lessons learned from the novel, I fondly remember reading the story of a group of rabbits traveling from their long-established but destroyed home in search of a new warren. All of this is a medium-winded way to introduce the topic of stolen bases and their practitioners, i.e., the rabbits, in fantasy baseball during the 2018 season.

My hypothesis is that the pure stolen-base guys in drafts this year haven't been worth the cost. The poor seasons from Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon come to mind as inspiration for this hypothesis. Even Trea Turner is going to fall well below his projected stolen-base total. Is this perception true, however? How badly have these stolen-base artists performed vs. expectation? How are their owners doing? And what should we do in reaction to this analysis, if anything?

Let's start with the overall stolen-base environment in baseball. Last year there were only 0.52 stolen bases per MLB game, the lowest rate since there were only 16 teams in baseball. So far this year, that stolen-base rate has dropped again, and not by a small amount – entering Sunday's games, there have been only 1,738 stolen bases in 3,514 games, good for a 0.49 per game rate. As baseball has become more of a take-and-rake game, more teams have calculated that the risk of stolen bases are not worth the cost of getting caught. Moreover, fewer stolen-base specialists are getting playing time, losing it at the expense of those who can hit for power.

As you might expect, the top stolen-base artists are down. For a while, Michael Taylor led the majors despite not having a full-time job, but Turner, Hamilton and a handful of others have since passed him. Still, Turner leads the majors with 32 steals (in 117 games), good for a pace of 44 stolen bases. That's well below his projected total of 57, and that of the projected leader, Billy Hamilton at 61. Here's a quick look at the top 12 (top 10 and ties, to be specific) projected (by RotoWire, which by extension means projected by me) stolen-base leaders, their current totals and their "on-pace" numbers:

PLAYER	PROJECTED	LAST YEAR	CURRENT	PACE	ADP
Billy Hamilton	61	59	29	40	82.06
Dee Gordon	60	60	27	37	29.50
Trea Turner	57	46	32	44	4.18
Starling Marte	42	21	28	38	40.47
Jonathan Villar	39	23	15	21	153.35
Delino DeShields Jr.	34	29	18	24	119.38
Mallex Smith	34	16	25	34	251.06
Jose Altuve	31	32	14	20	2.38
A.J. Pollock	30	20	10	14	71.29
Byron Buxton	29	29	5	10	42.18
Jean Segura	29	22	17	23	72.24
Bradley Zimmer	29	18	4	4	180.24

This really illustrates how far down the top projected steals guys are – and perhaps how far off I was in projecting them! For what it's worth, the "on-pace" is not that scientific of a calculation – just an equation derived from the number of games left on that player's schedule, with a couple of exceptions; Zimmer (out for the season) and Buxton (because he's been out so long). It does not handicap recent streaks or slumps. For instance, Hamilton has five stolen bases in the last seven games, and 13 in the last 30. That's the sort of pace his owners were hoping for when they drafted him. Likewise, Turner has 10 stolen bases in his last 30 games. The ADP column is taken from the 34 NFBC Main Event leagues, which are 15-team mixed leagues.

Perhaps taking the top 12 projected stolen base guys has too much of a selection bias. Let's instead go with the top 13 (to account for ties) current leaders.

PLAYER	PROJECTED	LAST YEAR	CURRENT	PACE	ADP
Trea Turner	57	46	32	44	4.18
Billy Hamilton	61	59	29	40	82.06
Starling Marte	42	21	28	38	40.47
Dee Gordon	60	60	27	37	29.50
Jose Ramirez	19	17	27	37	21.59
Whit Merrifield	27	34	25	35	62.56
Mallex Smith	34	16	25	34	251.06
Michael Taylor	17	17	24	29	221.50
Ender Inciarte	20	22	23	32	126.94
Mookie Betts	25	26	23	31	7.00
Tim Anderson	15	25	22	30	179.62
Lorenzo Cain	22	26	21	28	75.06
Mike Trout	26	22	21	29	1.03

This list naturally has a number of players who have or will exceed their projection – I say "naturally" because nearly every leaderboard has its share of overachievers. There's still a number of players who are going to provide 20-plus stolen bases, just less production at the top of the range. This list doesn't have too many surprises either – all were projected to have at least 15 stolen bases, and all had at least 17 stolen bases last year. There's good value in that predictability.

How valuable have those top stolen base artists been this year? Does it follow that when a category is scarce, it's best practitioners are more valuable? Let's look at RotoWire's Earned Auction Value tool for some perspective. First, the current leaders:

PLAYER	VALUE
Trea Turner	$29
Billy Hamilton	$9
Starling Marte	$29
Dee Gordon	$10
Jose Ramirez	$49
Whit Merrifield	$18
Mallex Smith	$11
Michael Taylor	$8
Ender Inciarte	$15
Mookie Betts	$47
Tim Anderson	$18
Lorenzo Cain	$16
Mike Trout	$39

And then, the projected leaders:

PLAYER	VALUE
Billy Hamilton	$9
Dee Gordon	$10
Trea Turner	$29
Starling Marte	$29
Jonathan Villar	$3
Delino DeShields Jr.	$0
Mallex Smith	$11
Jose Altuve	$22
A.J. Pollock	$13
Byron Buxton	-$16
Jean Segura	$26
Bradley Zimmer	-$12

If you look just at the leaderboard page, you start to think that investing in the rabbits is a pretty decent investment. But that's also deceptive. First, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any leaderboard seems full of good investments. But then you see the flops, and you'll notice that almost all of the failures are SB-only guys. And yet, we still need to get our stolen bases, especially in the NFBC, where there's an overall contest and no trading. So how have the top players in the NFBC Main Event tackled the category? Fortunately, you can sort by category with the overall standings, and you can click through each team's roster. Let's look at the broad picture first – in the past we've suggested that you need to average being in the 80th percentile in each category to have a chance to win your individual league and to compete in the overall contest. For stolen bases, the 80th percentile (of 510 teams) currently is at 98 stolen bases. Interestingly, only nine of the top-20 teams overall are in that 80th percentile among stolen bases, though four of the top five fit that criterion.

If you look a little closer at this list, not too many of these teams are really struggling in the category. There are a few that need to get on the stick and add more bags, but most are at least competitive.

This seems as good a time as any to point out that stolen bases are my personal blind spot. I have frequently had such a hard time adding enough, or properly valuing rabbits, hence the inspiration for this article:

There's only one team ahead of me in the overall standings that has fewer stolen bases than my 73 this season. I suppose this is also a good time to point out that I had Willy Adames' career week on my bench, with four stolen bases in as many days.

I looked at the top-20 teams in more detail, to see how they built their rosters in terms of adding stolen bases. I clicked through to see how many of them had each of the top 13 stolen-base guys. Here's the breakdown:

6 - Jose Ramirez (yeah, go figure, if you own Jose Ramirez, chances are you're doing pretty well this year)

3 - Starling Marte, Whit Merrifield

2 - Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Lorenzo Cain, Michael Taylor (since dropped by both)

1 - Trea Turner, Dee Gordon, Ender Inciarte

0 - Billy Hamilton, Mallex Smith, Tim Anderson

I also saw a lot of players between 15-19 stolen bases on those teams – players like Javier Baez, Ozzie Albies, Cesar Hernandez and Francisco Lindor.

What about the landmines among the top projected basestealers? We already saw that one top-20 team has Gordon, and none got saddled with Hamilton. But those aren't the real problem spots anyhow. The bottom four earners from our top-12 predicted stealers – Byron Buxton, Delino DeShields Jr., Jonathan Villar (though at least he's trending up), Bradley Zimmer – not surprisingly were avoided by our top 20. Two owners have had Villar, and one got saddled with Zimmer. None spent a precious early pick on Buxton or a top 10-round pick on DeShields.

How should we treat these results? While it's best to avoid broad sweeping conclusions from one sample, or these potentially selective endpoints, I think it does illustrate the danger in treating stolen bases like we often do with saves, by purposefully paying more in auctions or in terms of draft rounds on closers than what they're worth. The steals-only players didn't bring back much value this year, so far – the best values still are those who can do it all. This might have been the perfect storm sort of season, as Hamilton previously had been so reliably high in stolen bases. But then again, him dropping to the bottom of the order is a natural real life consequence of his hitting weaknesses.

One good way we can treat steals like saves is to speculate on stolen-base players in the free-agent market down the stretch, especially if you're in the business of managing categories rather than trying to find overall contributors. Maybe you can hit on Travis Jankowski, Willy Adames or Cedric Mullins. It's one way to make up some ground if you did get stuck on some of those landmines earlier. With a little bit of luck, you'll be able to guide your pack of rabbits through all the dangers to get them home to their new fantasy warren.