Fantasy Baseball Manager of the Year

Make a Run at Stolen Bases

August 7, 2006 — This is time of the season when people start dumping lackluster sp’s for middle relievers trying to chip away at high WHIP and ERA totals. Or try to sniff out the hottest bats to make up any ground they can in batting average.

While we’re not suggesting you ignore those categories, focusing on stolen bases might be you’re smarter play. If that is, you're within 10-20 sb's of making up a few points in the standings.

Two reasons.

First, as crazy as it might sound, the top base stealers like Reyes, Figgins, Pierre or Ichiro might be available for trade. Why? Well, when you check out your league’s standings in the steals category, you’ll often find the top 2 or 3 teams to be light years ahead of the pack — they have comfortable enough leads over the other 7 to 8 teams that they won’t risk losing their current point totals in the category by trading away their top base stealer. Especially if you can leapfrog 2 or 3 teams without catching up to your trade partner and threatening his “sb points.” Even more especially if you're willing to trade that manager a player that can really help him in another category down the stretch.

So some of those water bugs might be better trade targets than you might think. Just remember to use the “You only have to win the category by 1 sb to get the 10 points” approach in your negotiations.

Reason #2 you ought to look to make a move in steals is that, this time of year, there are always guys quietly stringing together a series of petty larcenies, adding up to nice steals totals, without anyone really noticing.

In a word, the key to finding these small time thieves is “opportunity.”

Clearly, a lot of major leaguers are capable of stealing bases. It's just that some have more chances to do so. For example, a singles hitter finds himself standing on first base quite often — with second, third and home ahead of him. All bases he could possibly steal.

Whereas a batter known for gap power will wind up hitting a lot of doubles and the occasional triple — great for slugging percentage and rbi production — but it cuts his opportunities to even attempt an sb. Standing on second, he only has 2 potential sb's ahead of him. On third, just 1. Granted, stealing home is extremely rare (though Angel Pagan did it on July 29th against the Cardinals), but it's extremely rare for everyone, so including it as an opportunity is relative for all would-be base stealers.

In a nutshell, a single or walk = 3 sb opps, a double = 2 sb opps, and a triple = just 1 sb opp. Add them all together and we get a player's total opportunities to attempt a stolen base (sort of like “total bases”) — call it “sbop.” Even better, knowing how many times a player actually does try to steal a base (sb's + cs = total sb attempts) we can divine how likely he is to be “on the run” — sort of a stolen base frequency, or "sb attempt to opportunity" ratio, if you will. Let's call it “atop” for “Attempt per Opportunity Percentage.”

Basically, if a guy has a 10% atop, he tries to steal a base once every 10 times he gets on base. And if he has a good sb%, hey, you want that guy on your roster to help you make up ground in the steals category.

With sbop and atop, we've got a few, new statistical ways to find and rank the best stolen base candidates. Let's put them to work, looking for the best options over the last month and last 2 weeks (both ending Sunday, August 6).

Top Base Stealers — MTD

Some very interesting names in there. Guys who may very well be sitting in your league’s free agency pool. Definitely go look for Eric Byrnes, Willy Taveras, Royce Clayton and Luis Castillo.

But first let's see who’s been “primed to run” the last two weeks.

Top Base Stealers — Last 2 Weeks

Again, some very interesting names there. Obviously, it’d be a stretch to think anyone would trade Soriano, Jeter or Vlad. But, maybe Felipe Lopez, Hanley Ramirez, Dave Roberts or Corey Patterson.

And you gotta think a handful of these guys are just waiting to be plucked off the wire, guys like Eric Byrnes, Luis Castillo, Angel Pagan, Ian Kinsler and Jamey Carroll. Interestingly, the #1 guy for the Last Month, Chone Figgins, is dead last over the last two weeks with only 33 sbop — a 0.192 avg. and 0.222 obp will do that to you.

Bottom line, you should be able to get a base stealer or two to help make up some ground in the sb category. And hopefully in your overall rankings.

Questions, thoughts, cool stories of how the MOTY System has helped your fantasy baseball team? Drop us an email. Your comments might show up here in a future MOTY Talk.