Reviewing Pod vs Steamer Projections — Stolen Base Downside

Yesterday, I reviewed my Pod vs Steamer projections series with the stolen base upside guys, those hitters whose Pod Projection in stolen bases was well above the Steamer extrapolated projection. Today, I’ll finish the series on the offensive side with the stolen base downside list, the guys I projected to steal far fewer bases than Steamer. Let’s see how they performed.

Meh, a slightly better performance than the upside list, but still lost by one player, unless you give me credit for David Dahl!

Eric Thames was never a basestealer in his previous time in the Majors or Minors, before he headed off to the KBO. But he suddenly felt a desire to swipe some bags overseas, and Steamer most certainly used those stats when forecasting the 13 steals. I didn’t buy at as it’s simply a different game over here and Thames obviously wouldn’t have gotten faster. He still does have decent speed though as evidenced by his Spd score and four triples, but clearly isn’t all that willing to make many attempts.

I’d love to hear Bryce Harper’s explanation for how he decides how often he’s going to run in a given year. Given all the injuries he has suffered, you would think he would take it easy on the basepaths every season! I figured his 21 steal total in 2016 was a complete fluke and was probably the most pessimistic projection out there. It turned out to be not pessimistic enough. It’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do in 2018.

Nothing indicated that Jorge Polanco would suddenly be a double digit base stealer, as he possesses just average speed and was never a big runner in the minors. Nevertheless, Steamer nearly hit the nail on the head with their forecast.

How does Manny Machado go from 20 steals to 0 to 9? Who does he think he is, Bryce Harper?! He even got back up to double digit attempts despite a career low OBP.

Clearly Rougned Odor cares little for how his steal attempts might be hurting his team’s offense. He certainly is not interesting in being more patience at the plate to get on base more frequently. It’s true Odor has improved his stolen base success rate taking baby steps every year, but he’s still at just 71%, which is not where you need to be if you want to continue receiving the green light in this homer-happy environment.

Josh Bell’s steals projection was a good example of the possible misses from a computer system, since he was coming off knee surgery, which you’d expect to curtail his willingness to swipe a base. He was also a poor basestealer throughout his professional career, so the Steamer projection looked quite suspect.

Andrew Benintendi owns above average speed, but he didn’t attempt a ton of steals in the minors, nor do so that successfully. And then he attempted just one steal over 118 plate appearances during his 2016 Red Sox audition. So that’s why I was bearish, but he exceeded everyone’s expectations en route to a 20/20 performance.