I have some terrible news for you. Crime rates dropped significantly. I know this sounds like it should be good news, but for baseball, this is boring. No one stole a base during the postseason (other than Randy Arozarena and, of course, Josh Naylor). 34 total playoff games, 35 total tackles, only 26 steals. Each team takes 0.51 shots per game, which is a significant decrease from the regular season average of 0.91 shots per game. The Blue Jays and Dodgers combined for just two steals. Boring.
On its own, this doesn’t seem too surprising. This is the fourth consecutive year the team has averaged fewer steals per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. The reason behind this is easy to understand. First, we had a logistical hurdle. During the playoffs, running the ball becomes more difficult. This year, we saw a 4.45 points per team rating during the regular season and just 4.02 in the playoffs. On-base percentage dropped 11 percentage points, which meant fewer runners and fewer stolen bases. Next, we have the risk aversion angle. When the stakes are highest, these baserunners are a more precious commodity. An out on base is a loud unforced error and you’ll be attacked in the newspapers the next morning. It’s hard to see how much potential value you’ll leave behind if you stick to where you are. I’m sure I’ve never read an article criticizing a player no Trying to steal.
The chart above shows the number of steals per game in the playoffs since 1995. This year, while at a lower level, is by no means an anomaly. However, there is some lies in this picture, and you might be surprised to learn that this is not always the case. Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen six postseasons with fewer steals per game than the regular season, and four postseasons with more steals per game than the regular season. Things have balanced out quite a bit. Additionally, it’s been an odd year for the stolen base rate to be down because, as you may have noticed, the small ball rate did go up in the postseason. This year, we saw 0.24 sacrifice bunts per team in the postseason, the most since 2015. Usually bunts and steals go hand in hand. They are methods for production runs. But that’s not the case. Teams are using one small-ball strategy and not another. Weird, right?
Now let me tell you why the first picture is a lie. Here’s the same chart, but it shows the percentage difference between the playoffs and the regular season. For example, let’s say a team takes an average of 1.0 shots during the regular season and an average of 0.9 shots during the playoffs. It will show up on the chart as a -10% difference.
Thinking about postseason stolen bases this way—as the percentages change from the regular season—makes things look a little different. This year, stolen base attempts are down 45% from the regular season. It still doesn’t look like a huge outlier, but it’s the second largest difference on the entire chart, behind only 2017. Stolen base attempts per game did go down, and that’s before we factor in stolen base opportunities. I mentioned before that the number of runs scored per game is down by more than half from the regular season, which affects the number of baserunners and therefore the number of stolen base opportunities. So let’s consider that as well.
Statcast tracks stolen base attempt percentage and looks at the rate of stolen base attempts in every pitching situation. For comparison purposes, it would take me an extremely long time to put all the data together for the playoffs (and I could only put it together going back to 2008), so I created a quick and dirty version using easily available data. I just divide the number of steal attempts by the number of singles, doubles, doubles, or runners on base. It is very simple, but also easy to calculate using available data. I call it the Janky Takeoff Rate and the formula is shown below.
JTR = (SB + CS) ÷ (1B + 2B + BB + HBP)
I compared each team’s JTR to their Statcast stolen base attempt rate this season and the correlation was 0.95. It’s clunky, but it’s certainly good enough for our purposes. The chart below shows the change in JTR from the regular season to the playoffs each year since 1969, when the division era meant the playoffs required at least eight games.
This blue line seems to move up and down every year or two. It’s everywhere. But make sure you keep looking to the right. This year’s 42% drop is the second-lowest in the 57-year history of the zoning era. This is the lowest level since 1970! Compared to previous regular seasons, no postseason matchup has been more cautious since Paul McCartney formed the Wings.
Why didn’t anyone run? I checked every factor I could think of. It does feel like there are a lot of blowouts in these playoffs and teams aren’t really running during the blowouts. I looked at whether there were many situations where the game was so close that it would make sense to try for a steal. It seems not so. According to Stathead data, 10 teams, or 29%, have led by at least 5 points in the ninth inning this postseason. That’s almost exactly the same rate as baseball’s playoff games over the past decade. There are already many big There was a blowout in October this year, but the overall number of blowouts was not impressive.
It’s not because we end up with a bunch of playoff teams that don’t try to run the ball. The Mariners, Cubs, Yankees and Brewers all rank in the top 10 in takeoff rate this season, while the 12 playoff teams combined have a takeoff rate that’s 8% higher than the league average, according to Statcast. Seattle leads all teams in this postseason with six steals, but they’re held by just two players; Arozarena stole four bags in four attempts, while Naylor (aka Tikki Henderson) had two steals in two attempts. Only one other player, the eliminated Phillies’ Trea Turner, has stolen multiple bases in the postseason. On the other hand, defense does have something to do with it.
Postseason catchers Austin Hedges, Carlos Narváez, Carson Kelly, JT Realmuto, Tyler Heineman, Will Smith and Dillon Dingler all rank in the top 15 in stolen bases per game this season, according to Statcast. Twelve of the top 20 made the playoffs. In fact, only three players who performed well in the postseason — Ben Rotevelt, Tyler Stephenson and Austin Wells — had below-average results. The numbers I’m using here are Statcast’s above-average steals per throw, and when you prorate all of the innings played by each catcher this postseason, the total CSAA per throw is 0.05, which is enough to put the catcher in the 76th percentile. So far in the postseason, there have been above-average throwing receivers 83% of the time. That certainly sounds like enough to deter would-be base stealers.
Still, we don’t know exactly why base stealing activity dropped so sharply this October. Is it just because of the catcher? Is it because of difficulty scoring or because risk aversion is particularly strong? Are there other factors we haven’t discussed yet? What are we able What can be said is that the runners did not choose the wrong time to steal. So far, runners have reached base 74 percent of the time, just one short of the 78 percent regular season mark. We can only hope that this continued success rate inspires them to keep going. Baseball is more fun when crime rates spike.
