Collette Calls: Historical Frequency

If you are not already consuming our Fantasy Baseball podcast, fix that quickly. I am not saying that because I was on with Clay Link this past Friday, but I am writing this because of the previous episode. James Anderson runs the Thursday podcast and had the well-decorated Rob Silver on. One of their early segments was on the riskiest hitters in the first two rounds, and I've embedded the video with the timestamp at the part I most enjoyed (from about 9:00 to 20:00), because Silver mentions metrics I've frequently used in this column over the season when discussing stolen bases: Stolen Base Opportunities and Stolen Base Frequency Attempts.

This is such an excellent point by Silver on how frequently Elly De La Cruz ran last season, but I wanted to expand upon the data he discussed.

Last season, De La Cruz led all full-time players with a 55 percent SB Frequency rate. SB Frequency is computed by summing up the player's stolen base attempts (SB+CS) and dividing that figure by their Stolen Base Opportunities (SBO) as found in the data at Baseball-Reference. The top of the leaderboard for mostly full-time players last season is shown below:

De La Cruz was simply on another level last season as he attempted 83 steals in just 151 stolen base opportunities. I do not have a way to break this down on a game-by-game level, but you may recall there was the discussion if he could potentially match the 80 steals that fellow Cincinnati Red legend Eric Davis recorded when he stole 80 bases in his amazing 1986 season. One could argue what Eric the Red did in 1986 and 1987 is arguably one of the greatest two-year stretches of fantasy baseball production for any hitter. 

Davis is extremely relevant to the main point of this article because he is the highwater mark for stolen base frequency, and yet few realize it. I posted the trivia question to BlueSky on Sunday and it took quite some time for someone to deliver the correct answer despite several hints:

Followers guessed all the following players before Rob Poole correctly guessed Davis: Marquis Grissom, Rickey Henderson, Scott Podsednik, Vince Coleman, Juan Pierre, Chone Figgins, Kenny Lofton, Devon White, Bobby Bonds, Michael Bourn, Lou Brock, Chuck Carr, Brian Roberts, Billy Hamilton and even De La Cruz. 

I have mentioned in a few articles this offseason how history is a fantastic teacher when it comes to concerns with players. Emmanuel Clase is attempting to become the first closer to ever save 40-plus games and pitch 70-plus innings in four consecutive seasons. Spencer Strider is attempting to become the first player to throw even as many as 70 innings in the season following the year they had an internal brace procedure, while Spencer Schwellenbach is hoping to avoid the same injury path Strider went through last year after shouldering a heavy workload within two years of missing a season due to Tommy John surgery. At least in De La Cruz's case, there is some precedence for his stolen base frequency, albeit none of it is recent.

The table below shows all the full-time players in the expansion era of baseball (1961 to present) with a stolen base frequency rate 50 percent or greater:

What De La Cruz did last season has not been done since Davis did what he did nearly 40 years ago. While there is precedence, it's almost irrelevant because it was so long ago. We only have two seasons of the new stolen base rules, so when we compare what De La Cruz did last year under than lens, his status as an outlier truly stands out:

De La Cruz comes into 2025 with a "new" manager in Terry Francona who may not be as willing as David Bell to let De La Cruz run. The stolen base projections that are freely available have him anywhere from 47 steals on the low end (THE BAT) to 60 to the high end (ours). Silver mentioned what happens to De La Cruz's value if his steals slip to the 40s in steals while the strikeouts continue to put a hard cap on his batting average upside.  That could mean something like 24 homers, 40 steals and a .256 batting average, which was worth $20 last year, as those were the exact numbers Jazz Chisholm Jr. put up as the 29th-ranked hitter last season. De La Cruz is not falling out of the top five in RotoWire Online Championships over the past two weeks and went the spot after my selection of Aaron Judge at third-overall in my RotoWire Online Championship on February 26th.

In short, if you want De La Cruz to repeat a 60-steal season, you are essentially asking him to once again attempt steals at an historic rate. The last player to lead the league in stolen base frequency in consecutive seasons was Mallex Smith, who led baseball in 2018 and 2019 with rates of 22.0 percent and 27.5 percent under the old rules. Recent history simply is not in favor of De La Cruz repeating what he did in 2024 on the bases:

Just another reminder that past results do not guarantee future results, and Silver indeed has an excellent defense in his prediction of De La Cruz being a potential first-round bust.