Pitchers & Catchers to Exploit, Avoid When Chasing Steals

The value of a stolen base may vary from daily site to daily site, but on the site where I play my daily cap contests, a steal is worth five points. Throw in the fact that a runner has to get on base to be able to steal another one and a steal becomes worth seven or eight points. And that’s assuming they don’t come around to score or do anything else in their other plate appearances. You could certainly do worse than seven or eight points from a slot. Needless to say, I like guys who can run a little (or a lot) in daily leagues.

In order to be able to better pick base stealers in daily salary cap formats, I decided to look at the pitchers and catchers who are the most and least friendly to base stealers.

For pitchers I compiled a sample size of the 95 pitchers who have topped 100 innings in each of the last two seasons. I divided the number of steals a pitcher has allowed by the number of opportunities there were to steal bases against him. Baseball-reference.com describes an opportunity as all plate appearances in which a runner was on first or second with the next base open. Below are the pitchers (who currently have a starting job) with the best and worst percentages (at least one standard deviation or more above or below the mean). Best means the least favorable pitchers for base stealers, and worst means the most favorable pitchers for base stealers.

Best Percentages
Name	SB	SBO	SB/SBO
Johnny Cueto*	2	509	0.003929
Matt Harrison*	4	543	0.007366
Doug Fister	6	523	0.011472
Kyle Lohse	7	558	0.012545
Mark Buehrle	8	593	0.013491
Bartolo Colon	6	422	0.014218
Vance Worley	7	461	0.015184
Ian Kennedy	10	613	0.016313
R.A. Dickey	11	621	0.017713
Jeremy Guthrie	11	597	0.018425
* indicates player is currently on DL

Worst Percentages
Name	SB	SBO	SB/SBO
Felix Hernandez	48	665	0.07218
Tim Lincecum	48	621	0.077295
Edinson Volquez	38	488	0.077869
Ervin Santana	44	562	0.078292
Mat Latos	42	527	0.079696
Cole Hamels	46	535	0.085981
Ubaldo Jimenez	56	610	0.091803
Josh Beckett	50	468	0.106838
A.J. Burnett	62	562	0.11032
Tommy Hanson	61	411	0.148418

 

There are a couple of interesting things to note on the ‘best’ list. The first is that the list is almost exclusively made up of low strikeout, low walk guys without a ton of velocity. Collectively, they have a strikeout rate of only about 16% and a walk rate right around 7%. Individually, only four of them have a career K% over 16.5%, and the highest BB% in the group is 8%. As for velocity, Cueto tops the list with an average velocity of 93 mph. Guthrie is the only other one above 92 mph. The rest of the group sits 92 mph or lower with half of them averaging 90 mph or lower. On the ‘bad’ list, they collectively have a K% of almost 22%, a BB% of 8.8%, and every guy averages at least 90 mph on his fastball.

The other interesting thing is that all but two of them are right-handed. Lefties are generally thought to be better at holding men on since they face first base when they pitch. In fact, when I asked a friend to guess some of the names atop the list, he immediately started naming off lefties.

This list goes against the easy logic that lefties and/or guys who get the ball to the plate quicker with higher velocity make it harder to steal bases. I won’t go into a full look at why low velocity, control guys might be better at holding runners on, but one thought is that what allows them to have better control is a shorter, less complicated delivery. That short delivery might also be more helpful than velocity in getting to the plate quickly. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about mechanics to properly evaluate this theory, but it’s something I’d be very interested to see evaluated by someone with that knowledge.

As for catchers, I compiled a sample of all 52 catchers who have at least 1,000 innings caught over the last three seasons. To determine who is good at preventing steals and who is not, I used two stats. The first is simply the percentage of time a player was caught stealing when trying to run on a particular catcher.

The second is Stolen Base Runs Saved (rSB). The Fielding Bible describes the stat as giving the catcher credit for throwing out runners and preventing them from attempting steals in the first place. You can find this stat under the advanced fielding tab here on the site.

Below are the lists of the best and worst catchers (who currently have a job) with best meaning least favorable to base stealers and worst meaning most favorable to base stealers.

Best
Name	CS%	rSB
Yadier Molina	0.42233	14
Ryan Hanigan	0.396266	5
Ivan Rodriguez	0.393258	5
Miguel Montero	0.379464	6
David Ross	0.365591	8
Jose Molina	0.359375	8
Matt Wieters	0.357143	16
Wilin Rosario	0.343137	4
Miguel Olivo	0.332031	12
Buster Posey	0.331878	8

Worst
Name	CS%	rSB
John Buck	0.229437	-7
Joe Mauer	0.225989	-4
Victor Martinez	0.214724	-3
Michael McKenry	0.206349	-2
John Jaso	0.197279	-5
Ryan Doumit	0.174963	-10
Francisco Cervelli	0.141304	-7

 

 

 

I don’t think you should necessarily pick speed guys facing starters or catchers that are bad at preventing steals on that fact alone. It would probably be wise to start with and consider other factors like the quality of the opposing pitcher and platoon splits. Use the lists of bad starters and catchers to help you make close decisions between a small number of guys, and use them to help you find potential bargains. However, I do think you can decide to avoid speed guys solely on the fact that they are facing a pitcher or catcher that is tough on base stealers. There aren’t too many players who steal a lot of bases who can produce exclusively with the bat. If a player’s production comes substantially from his legs, don’t pick him when facing the good starters and catchers.