Sneaky Steals Sources for 2024 Fantasy Baseball
Looking into the data to pick out some potential cheap stolen base options for the 2024 fantasy baseball season
Let’s do a little Q&A here.
Question: Do we want stolen bases in fantasy baseball?
Answer: Yes
Question: How do we get steals?
Answer: We draft players that steal a lot of bases
Question: How does a player steal bases?
Answer: They have to
Get on first base
Be kind of fast
Be willing to attempt steals
That’s pretty simple. But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking or talking about point one there.
Point One - Get on First Base
It’s very rare to see a steal of third base, mainly just because it’s not much of an advantage. In most situations, being on second is about just as good as being on third. Most hits will score you in either case, so hitters are content to be on second. It’s a much bigger advantage to get from first to second.
So we want players that get on first base a lot. And how do you get to first base? Mostly:
Hit a single
Draw a walk
There are other things, of course, fielder’s choice, errors, hit by pitch, etc. But the vast majority of steals will come after a single or a walk.
We can go down another level and say well, how do you hit a single? Two keys to hitting a single:
Don’t strike out
Don’t hit a fly ball
99%+ of strikeouts end up without you on first base (dropped third strikes), and only 5% of singles come on fly balls.
Point Two - Be Kind of Fast
We have data on this these days, we can use sprint speeds to figure out who is fast and who is not. It’s not as strong a correlation as you’d think, here’s an ugly plot I wrote up as fast as I could with no regard to aesthetics:
So less than half of the variance in stolen base attempt rates has to do with how fast the hitter is. But this model doesn’t take into account strikeouts or on base percentage or anything, so it’s overly simple. To break down average stolen base attempt rates by sprint speed:
Significant climbs every time you add one mile per hour to the sprint speed. Since 7% was the league average last year, we can say we require at last a 27mph sprint speed to be a threat for steals, and every tick upward from there makes a big difference. So, best fast.
Point Three - Want to Steal
You aren’t going to steal bags if you don’t want to. Mike Trout is pretty fast (29.3 sprint speed), but doesn’t want to steal bases. Same is true with guys like Matt Vierling, Ezequiel Duran, Amed Rosario, Jeremy Pena, and others.
So we do want to look for guys that had at least that league average 7% SB Attempt% last year.
One other note is that when predicting steals, it’s much better for us to only use data from 2023 since that was after the rules changed. More data is usually better, but the rules were so much different last year that using older data will probably result in more noise than we want.
The Targets
So we want to look for hitters with
Lower K% (less than 27%)
Higher BB% (greater than 7%)
Lower FB% (less than 27%)
Higher Speed (greater than 27mph)
Likely playing time in MLB
The Rookies
Let’s bang these easy ones out first.
Jackson Chourio, Milwaukee Brewers (ADP 125)
K%: 18%
BB: 7.4%
SB Attempt%: 35.6%
FB%: ??
Speed: ??
He didn’t spend much time in AAA so I can’t give an exact fly ball rate, but FanGraphs shows high GB% for his minor league career and his FB% in a very short time in AAA was a laughable 9%, so it seems like this is a ground ball or line drive hitter - perfect! I don’t have a speed reading on him either, but the scouting report says “plus-plus”. So I think that’s good.
I hate prospects, as you should know by now, but if I take one it will be someone that I believe can get me there in steals at least. And Chourio seems like a guy who could steal a whole mess of bags this year if he can get on base at a decent clip.
Tyler Black, Milwaukee Brewers (ADP 401)
K%: 18%
BB: 16%
SB Attempt%: 37.6%
FB%: 23%
Speed: ??
Black doesn’t swing the bat very much. His AAA Swing% was 41.7%, three points below the minor league average. That plus a good eye gave him a 16% BB%. His league adjusted OBP was .383, so I think it’s fair to expect a .330+ OBP from him when he does reach the Majors.
Maybe I could have summarized all of this by just telling you that he stole 55 bases last year, 16th most in all of pro ball.
He does not have the clear path to the Major Leagues that Chourio does, as he’s a guy still with a minor league contract competing for a job in camp right now. At this point, he doesn’t profile as much of a home run hitter either, which is fine (and kind of good for steals), but it might make the Brewers a bit less eager to get him in the Major League lineup. I wouldn’t draft him in normal leagues, but I would add him immediately upon his call-up if my team is in need of some steals.
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