The Cubs Aren't Running Enough--Yes, Still

[Matthew Trueblood]

After stealing eight bags against the hapless Pirates Monday night, the Cubs rank eighth in MLB with 120 steals this year. They need to run much, much more, though.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

You can do lots of math around the breakeven success rate on stolen base attempts. In some situations, the odds are in a team's favor even if they're only 68% to succeed when sending a runner. In other situations, the number creeps past 75%. Much depends on the game state, but the identities of the batter (and those due up behind them) and the pitcher count for something, too. The weather conditions matter. Injury risk has to be priced in, at times. It's a tricky calculation.

Let's start, then, with a simpler one: Divide 120 by 143, and you get 0.839. That's the Cubs' success rate on steals in 2024: 83.9%. You can do lots and lots of math with breakeven rates, but they all come in well below that. The Cubs are eighth in MLB in Go Rate, a metric that divides steal attempts by plate appearances in which a player had a clear opportunity to attempt a steal. Based on the frequency with which they've succeeded, they should be thinking more about Go and less about Rates.

Obviously, not everyone can or should steal bases. However, as the season has unfolded, it's become increasingly clear that the Cubs have several players capable of thievery--and that they're coaching them up well. Seiya Suzuki was a downright bad basestealer over his first two seasons in MLB. With 15 steals and 12 times caught stealing, he was actively hurting the team by taking off. He was caught on his first attempt this spring, on Apr. 14, too. Since then, though, he's 11-for-15, a respectable 73.3% success rate. Ian Happ is now 11-for-13 on the season, and 9-for-10 since Jun. 1. You already know about the exploits of Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nico Hoerner, and even Dansby Swanson, who has made speed a newly important part of his game over the last five weeks.

In the modern game, with the pitch clock as a subtle mechanism for timing a pitcher up and the rules against disengagements as a deterrent to throwing over to limit leads, it doesn't require blinding speed to effectively steal bases. The Twins, for instance, are one of the slowest teams in the league, but some of even their slowest players are also their best basestealers. They simply catch pitchers, not napping, but triaging their tasks and sliding the slow-footed runner down their mental priority list. Anthony Rizzo used to exploit this brilliantly. During one stretch of more frequent play earlier this year, Patrick Wisdom did it well, too.

Michael Busch might be the next project for the coaching staff. A good on-base guy whose feel for baserunning is better than it seems, he's shown no comfort at all stealing bases so far this year. He should have that ability, though. He just needs to learn to use it. Just 2-for-3 so far this year, he would be a good candidate to sneakily take a half-dozen bags down the stretch, if the team can help him commit to the bit--even if it means getting caught a couple of times, for learning purposes.

The thing is, if you're getting caught as infrequently as the Cubs are and hitting for power as inconsistently as the Cubs are, you need to be running even more. The team is third in MLB in Go Rate in the month of August, but there's room to push further, and they should explore it. For as long as the team remains theoretically in the playoff race, every run counts, and their aggressive style on the bases is paying dividends. Those dividends could be even bigger, if the team got even more ruthlessly daring.

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