Opportunities, start percentage and stolen basic opportunism

David Hamilton Don’t wait casually for first base. He lies, waiting for the least opening to start. View a starting time where Hamilton is on the bases, and he is often as much a point of discussion as the man on the record. Take the game between the Red Sox and Guardians on 1 September, for example. Hamilton Pinch-Ran for Carlos Narváez of Connor Wong On the plate. Wong polluted a bump for strike one with the entire defense focused on Hamilton at first base. Then Hamilton stole second at the next pitch, even with the catcher, pitcher and infielers all on his every movement.

Hamilton is not the most productive base verser in the Majors. He is not the most successful. But he is the baserunner who tries to steal most often, after adjusting opportunities, and so he is a great poster boy for what I would like to talk about today: stolen basic opportunities and start percentage.

It is not necessary to make a stolen basis possible, only a runner and an open base. However, you both need both of them. Draw a walk to load the bases, and you don’t try a stem without something very strange. Stolen basic options are not easy to find in a box score or a game summary. They are the negative space of baseball – nobody counts them, and it is easier to see where they are not where they are. So, uh, I counted them.

To do this, I first made a definition. I define a stolen basic opportunity as a record performance where, for at least one field, a runner at first base does not see the second base or a runner on second base sees the third unoccupity. In other words, if a board performance happens where the runner could have been stolen without having to involve several baseunners at the same time, that is a stolen basic opportunity.

From there, I threw spellog books for the 2025 season to my computer and told it to compile stolen basic options from each board at the latest of the year, for every Honkerunner that reached at least once. Then I merged that with a database with actual stolen basic arguments. This gave me both opportunities and attempt rates, which I call the starting percentage for the rest of this article.

For example, Hamilton has delivered 34 options to steal second and 23 to steal third, for 57 total opportunities. He tried to steal 24 steals. That means that 42% of the time he can go, he goes. That is almost inscrutably aggressive, the highest rank in baseball. It gets what I think it is true feature of a basest dealer: everyone knows that he is going, and yet he goes anyway. He does not have the best success rate in the competition because he is running in a number of difficult places for Steals, and he does not have the most stolen basics because he is not a daily player, but when it comes to production per chance, nobody pushes the envelope more than Hamilton.

In fact, hardly anyone is even close. Here are the 10 Baserunners who try to steal the most when they get the chance (at least 25 options to steal second):

I gave Shrift to Caballero by making Hamilton the poster boy for this statistics, but hey, someone has to be in the first place. Caballero is almost as likely to go for it as Hamilton, and between playing every day and an 80-point edge in OBP, he has many more opportunities. The two are only at the top of the Majors when it comes to converting stolen basic opportunities into attempts.

The top of this list is an excellent job to emphasize the do-all-base racers that are as fast as competent. There are no slow pokes on this list of 10, no Juan Soto Sneak attacks. If you often try to steal this, a quarter of your chances or more, that means a combination of speed and desire. Many of these guys are also part -time players. Limit the list to everyday tribal guests, and you will see the addition of many of the players considered the best baseunners in the game:

For me this is a different category than the list that Hamilton leads leads, and Caballero is the best here. If you have so many opportunities to steal, you certainly play every day, which means that many of your stolen basic options are not made to be tailor -made. Part of the reason that Hamilton’s starting percentage is so high is that he often comes into play as a pinch runner in situations in which a stem is favorable. Bobby Witt Jr. At first base in a 7-2 match in the ninth, he ends up much more often because he plays much more often, and that lowers his starting percentage, even if it does not lower his overall skill as a basestealer.

I have shown this part of the list largely to emphasize Jacob Young, who is almost the only high -volume base version that has not been very successful this year. Of the 56 everyday players, this season have a starting percentages of 10% or higher, Young has the lowest stolen basic rate percentage, with 58.3%. Only four other players (Tyler Freeman” Jordan Beck” Caleb DurbinAnd Andy -Pages) are even below 70%. Young is quickly blazing and stole 33 bases a year ago; He may just be a victim of his own success and tries too many Steals because he was so good to do this safely last year. He can also just suffer an unfortunate piece. The point is that he stands out; Most baserunners who try to steal at even 10% of their chances do these because they are incredibly successful.

Graphically it looks like this:

You do not have to draw a trend line or something like that; A simple visual inspection is sufficient. Low frequency Basestealers are usually low -frequency basestal players because they are not good at stealing bases. That is why the lowest success rates are all for players with low starting percentages. By the time you rise above a starting percentage of 10%, however, there is little connection between the tendency to steal and the chance of stealing safely.

Do we have to cut the data in a different way? Let us cut the data in a different way. What about the boys with the most stolen basic options, the always at Basic Club? Imagine that Rafael Devers ran like David Hamilion:

These are all players with 250 or more stolen basic options in 2025. This list does not sort on stolen base cap, as the others I have shown so far; Instead, this is actually a mix of OBP, availability and batting order. Devers is hardly the only ploffer on the list; 11 of the 24 have starting percentages below 5%. The interesting list is the players who are always on the base and are often executed:

That’s right: Soto is now a track star. The potential 40/40 men is a biter in this list of eight productive thieves. See how slow he is compared to them! Can more Soto types be lower in the ranks, runners with the pork chops to steal base on a high clip, but who just doesn’t benefit from their talents? Maybe – although probably nobody is as good as Soto is working on it. Here are some very successful basestal players who do not steal that often:

I am not surprised to see a list of great Hunkopers who are not as young as before. Springer and Semien have been great on the Basepaths for ten years and still choose their stains pretty well; I expect that they could not increase their starting percentage without seeing their success rate falling. Profar, Albies and Acuña may be on the list because the Braves have asked them to run less; They are all pretty good and quite successful, but I don’t expect them to pick it up, given that they don’t have this year. Acuña could in particular steal much more, but chooses not to do that, probably because it will be in the last five seasons of his second ACL operation.

The most interesting names here are for me Cam Smith and Junior Caminero. Neither of them fell on the Basepaths in the Minor Leagues, but they have been doing an excellent job in the Majors so far. Smith in particular will probably continue to steal more while adapting to the major competitions. He is pretty fast and a good baseunner exclusively stealing; I think he is a candidate to make a big leap here, because he could afford to take his success rate meaningfully as long as he leaves more often. Caminero is more interesting on a Soto manner; He is not a special fleet of foot, but seven sweeps and only once caught stealing suggesting that he could look more at running. However, I am much more convinced by Smith. Shout too Kyle SchwarberWho has been acting his own big secret man for years. Is he fast? No. Is he successful? Unsecured.

Just like Michael Rosen’s research on Traillopers, I think this look at the stolen basic rate through the lens of opportunities is aimed at a very small lead in the game. For the most part, better basestal players steal more often and more successfully. That said, I think there is value to look at the Uitbijters, boys like Caminero and Hamilton and Soto. Knowing how often a runner opportunities turns into stolen bases, we may not tell much about how much value they add – our basic statistics have all that covered – but they can offer a valuable context for how best in the game is on the bases on the bases. Finally, here is A sortable list From stolen basic options, starting percentage and success rate for anyone who has had at least one opportunity to steal in 2025.

Statistics current up to and including Friday 5 September.