Thomas Jefferson Jankowski

It’s a strange season for stolen bases so far, is it not? It seemed to us, just impressionistically, that there have been a lot more caught-stealings this year than last, and so it proves statistically. You don’t have to be Bill James to notice that last year’s success rate for stolen bases was 70% and this year’s is 68%–the lowest, if it persists for a full season, since 1999.

Other numbers paint the picture even more clearly. Teams are attempting to steal bases a tiny (and thus insignificant) bit more than last year—5.6 attempts per Stolen Base Opportunity in 2016, 5.43 in 2015. And the total number of stolen bases this season is exactly what you’d have expected, given last year’s numbers. But there have been way more caught-stealings—roughly one per day more, across all of MLB, which seems like a lot.

Why is this happening, and what can we, as Fantasists, do about it? It seems clear that assorted misdeeds and misfortunes have rendered many of the very best base stealers hors de combat so far. Look at last year’s stolen-base Top 20. Dee Gordon’s been naughty. Billy Hamilton has missed some time because of injury and been batting last most of the season, though he seems to be coming around. Charlie Blackmon spent two weeks on the DL. A.J. Pollock is probably out for the season. Ben Revere’s been sidelined since the 4th inning of Opening Day. Jose Reyes has been more than naughty. Jake Marisnick is in the minors. Cameron Maybin has been out since early March, and his “rehab” journey (see infra) has been, let us say, bumpy.

That’s an aggregate 80% SB success rate pretty much gone missing, and probably accounts for the difference between this year and last. So—since there are just as many SBs this year as last—who’s picked up the slack? Mostly, it’s been the usual suspects. And anyway, it’s a moot question for us, because anyone who’s getting SBs is already owned in every league.

Still, there are a couple of interesting names on the list. Melvin Upton Jr. we’ll get to next week. And we can’t forbear mentioning that we’re kicking ourselves—we’d prefer to kick someone else, but there’s no one else around—for passing up a once very cheap Rajai Davis, who’s now 2nd in the AL in SBs. We knew that Cleveland manager Terry Francona, when he’s handed a really fast base stealer, will in fact use the guy to steal bases. He did this with Doug Glanville in Philadelphia and, God knows, with Jacoby Ellsbury in Boston. We just didn’t think that Davis, who’ll be 36 this year, was that guy. What we didn’t notice was that, according to Baseball Info Solutions’ “Stolen Base Attempt Times,” he can still get it done. Indeed, he is faster than, inter alia, Dee Gordon, Ellsbury, Gregory Polanco, and Mookie Betts. Davis is playing less now that Michael Brantley is back, but he’s still playing, and figures to wind up with at least 30 steals.

Is there anyone who’s not widely owned and might get you steals? Perhaps, although they all come with caveats, which as you probably know are salt-cured fish eggs. First of all, there’s Cameron Maybin, who, we’re surprised to learn, is owned in only 3.5% of ESPN leagues and 5% of Yahoo leagues. We suspect he’s owned in your league, as he is in all of ours. Maybin’s rehab is back on track after a couple of derailments, about which more in a moment, and Anthony Gose (.209/.293/.343) is keeping the Tigers’ center field job nice and warm for him. We note with puzzlement that Detroit manager Brad Ausmus, normally a stolen-base fancier, is running less than anyone except Buck Showalter’s elephantine Orioles, though that may just be because Maybin isn’t there yet.

We mention Maybin partly as an excuse for a digression. If you don’t want to join us, skip this and the next paragraph. To summarize Maybin’s Joblike 2016: In early March, he’s hit by a pitch and breaks his left wrist. Five weeks later, he’s in Toledo on a rehab assignment. Toledo’s playing Louisville, and Maybin’s left wrist is again hit by a pitch. It’s not broken this time, but he misses a week, begins re-rehabbing, and hurts his shoulder making a diving catch.

Can we return to that second HBP for a moment? The perpetrator was 28-year-old Reds farmhand and career minor leaguer Drew Hayes. We realize that baseball valorizes ruthless competitiveness, and we realize that the Reds aren’t responsible for the Tigers’ well-being. Still, if you’d asked us, we’d have said that drilling $8 million worth of rehabbing major league center fielder wasn’t a smart career move for an aging journeyman. Yet two days later, the Reds summoned him to Cincinnati, where he’s been pitching ever since, though not with much success. A little unorthodox, no? Is there any kind of back story here? We’re unaware of any. Louisvillians (?), Toledonians (??), can you help us out?

Now back to our scheduled programming. Another interesting guy is Reds’ prospect Jose Peraza (owned in 1.9% of ESPN leagues and 2.9% of Yahoo leagues). He’s stolen 60 or more bases in two different minor league seasons. But for Brandon Phillips’s no-trade contract, he’d probably be the Reds’ second baseman. As it is, he’s languishing in Louisville. But all that stands—literally—between him and the Reds’ shortstop job is Zack Cozart’s surgically-repaired, extremely delicate, and recently tweaked right knee. The yellow light with Peraza is that he’s only 2 for 6 in stolen base attempts this season, which could signify anything or nothing.

Then there’s our heartthrob Emilio Bonifacio. We wrote about him at length in March, and thought he’d stick with the Braves, whose manager Fredi Gonzalez likes Bonifacio and likes to have him steal bases. Instead, he was the Braves’ last cut—not just demoted but released, though immediately re-signed to a minor league contract. The problem, so we’ve read, was that his speed just wasn’t there.

Fast forward to last weekend. The Braves are pathetic, and nowhere is their pathos more conspicuous than at second base. Meanwhile, Bonifacio is tearing it up in AAA (.329/.377/.371, 10 for 13 in SBs). By his own account, the main thing he’s been doing in the minors is “getting my timing on the bases.” The Braves demote one of their struggling second basemen and summon Bonifacio to Atlanta, only to learn that—for reasons too dull and technical to bother explaining now—he’s ineligible for promotion until next weekend. It looks like he’ll be up then, and—we surmise—be given a shot at the second base job. If he can play at all, he’ll keep the job, and if he keeps the job, he’ll steal bases.

To be continued next time, unless our plans are overtaken by the fierce rush of events. So what about the title of this installment? It’s obscure and pretentious even by our standards. We’ll explain its meaning next week, though you’re welcome to speculate in the interim. Meanwhile, though, yes: if you’ve got room on your reserve roster, you could do worse than furnish it with San Diego outfielder Travis Jankowski.