Pod vs Steamer Projections — Stolen Base Downside

After a short break to tend to family matters, let’s return to the comparison of my Pod Projections to the Steamer forecasts. A week ago, I identified six hitters I was more bullish on for stolen bases, so today, I’ll discuss the hitters I’m more bearish on. To ensure we’re comparing apples to apples, I extrapolated Steamer’s stolen base projections to the same number of plate appearances I’m forecasting for each player.

In last week’s piece, I noted that Steamer is projecting a whopping 304 more stolen bases than I am after controlling for plate appearances. That’s crazy! I just realized that it’s simply a matter of how much each of us are expecting steals to rebound. Stolen bases have been trending downward in recent years, so Steamer is expecting a more significant dead cat bounce than I am, apparently. As a result, there were far more players eligible for this list than for the upside group.

**Whenever I talk about the Steamer projections below, it’s always going to be the extrapolated ones above over the same number of plate appearances I’m projecting

Eric Thames stole 64 bases over his three season in the KBO league, averaging 24 per 600 plate appearances. That’s pretty amazing, considering he swiped just three over 684 Major League plate appearances, and players typically don’t get speedier as they age! But really, his total was inflated by a ridiculous 40 steals in 2015, but in his other two years, he was in the low teens, a much more reasonable figure. That said, he’s 30 years old and figures to hit cleanup for the Brewers, which is a spot you don’t typically expect many stolen base attempts from. Steamer and I are really just taking wild guesses here, but given his age, minor and Major League track record, and spot in the order, I think projecting double digit steals is a bit too aggressive.

Man, has any counting stat jumped around as much as Bryce Harper’s steals?! Since his 2012 debut, he’s gone 18-11-2-6-21. He hasn’t even recorded an average Spd score since 2012 and has a career success rate of just 69%, so he’s not really doing anyone any good by attempting so many steals. For a guy who always seems to be playing at less than 100%, or on the DL, you would think he would be a bit more cautious on the basepaths.

Jorge Polanco wasn’t much of a basestealer in the minors and he hasn’t been very effective at actually making it to the next base safely during his professional career. Steamer figures he attempts a stolen base at a higher clip this season, but I’m not seeing it.

Which one doesn’t belong? 7-6-4-20-0. If you said 20, you would be correct! Those are Manny Machado’s stolen base totals since his 2012 debut, with his shortened 2012 and 2014 seasons extrapolated to the number of plate appearances I’m projecting this season. He hasn’t shown above average speed since his 2012 debut, so it’s hard to imagine him rebounding all the way from the big fat zero in steals to seven. He has only been successful about 63% of the time on his steals, so it makes little sense for him to go.

Rougned Odor dazzled with both power and speed in 2016, but he, too, is a poor basestealer and hasn’t been much of a speed threat since his minor league days back in 2013.

Josh Bell is recovering from knee surgery, attempted just one steal with the Pirates over a quarter of a season last year, and went a pathetic 3 for 10 on the basepaths during his time at Triple-A. An injury that should reduce willingness to steal, an actual demonstrated unwillingness to steal at the MLB level, and poor success rates in the minors? That doesn’t sound like a guy you project more than a couple of steals from.

Here we go again with a young player getting a low steal projection from me, but a more bullish one from Steamer. Andrew Benintendi was similar to Bell in that he actually received an MLB audition over 100 plate appearances and displayed no such desire to steal any bases. He attempted just one, which followed a weak 8 for 15 success rate at Double-A. He definitely has speed, but in a strong lineup, how much into the double digits will he reach?

Since we’re controlling for playing time, David Dahl’s back issue won’t affect this discussion. If you extrapolate Dahl’s stolen base attempts from last year to what Steamer is projecting on the plate appearance front this year, you get just about 11 attempts. So Steamer is figuring a significant jump in attempts. In fact, the system expects Dahl to attempt a steal at double the rate he did in 2016. Heck, it’s probably higher because Dahl got on base at a .359 clip last year (thanks to a .404 BABIP), but Steamer is projecting severe OBP regression to .322. And yet, despite projecting him to reach base far less frequently, the steal attempts are going to surge. I see the minor league record, but weigh what he did in the Majors much more significantly, especially since the decline in steals rate occurred to a player playing half his games in an offensive haven, where you don’t want to run yourself into an out.