Pete Crow-Armstrong's Base-Stealing Bravado Comes From the Most Aggressive Leads in Baseball

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Pete Crow-Armstrong’s ability on the basepaths is incredibly valuable. Now, thanks to Baseball Savant, we have an easier way to quantify exactly how valuable it is, and precisely where that value is coming from. 

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

Released just last month, Baseball Savant now has what they are calling the Baserunning Run Value Leaderboard. The headliner within this leaderboard is the Baserunning Runs metric, which combines both runs added via stolen bases and those added via extra bases taken, to give us one all-encompassing metric for how many runs a player’s baserunning was worth.

There are several Cubs-related nuggets within this leaderboard, and I don’t think any should be all that surprising. Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson are both very good baserunners. They fall among the top 30 in baseball in Baserunning Runs. The North Siders don’t really employ any poor baserunners, outside the catcher's spot, with Michael Busch and Seiya Suzuki being the only two Cubs to have a negative number (and just barely so): the two of them were each worth -1 baserunning runs in 2024. 

Then, there’s Pete Crow-Armstrong. He ranked as the ninth-most valuable baserunner in baseball, adding 6 Baserunning Runs. Six of the eight players in front of him had significantly more plate appearances than did Crow-Armstrong, thus giving them more of opportunities to accumulate that value. Any way you slice it, he is already one of the best baserunners in baseball. There are a couple more interesting and fun nuggets regarding the rookie’s baserunning within this leaderboard. The shocking headline here is: Crow-Armstrong might still have room to improve.

As previously mentioned, the Baserunning Runs framework adds your runs via extra bases taken on balls in play to your runs via stolen bases and advancements on balks. Baseball Savant allows you to see the split. Crow-Armstrong was worth four runs via stolen bases, which was eighth-best in baseball; and one run via extra bases taken, which put him 59th, pretty low for a speedster.

Corbin Carroll led MLB in runs via extra bases taken, with nine. That put him three runs ahead of the next-best player, which was Jarren Duran. According to sprint speed, Crow-Armstrong is just as fast as (if not faster than) Carroll.

We can see that the Diamondbacks’ star tried to advance on 53 percent of his opportunities, when the average runner would have tried to advance 34 percent of the time. Crow-Armstrong tried to advance 44 percent of the time, when the average runner would have tried to advance 32 percent of the time. He only made one out on those attempts, and it was a situation where his third base coach sent him, and it still took a pretty perfect throw to get him out:

Arguably, there is room for the young speedster to be more aggressive when it comes to advancing an extra base on hits and other batted balls. With that being said: He is incredibly aggressive when it comes to stealing bases. We all know Crow-Armstrong was incredibly effective at stealing bases in 2024, going 27 for 30. It’s fascinating that we now can see why he was so effective.

One additional inclusion on these leaderboards tells us how large (or small) a runner’s lead was. Pete Crow-Armstrong led all of baseball in his average distance from a base on any plausible stolen base attempt, at a pitcher’s first move. He was, on average, 14 feet away from the base. At a pitcher’s release, he was (on average) 18.7 feet from the base, which was second in baseball behind only Mookie Betts. Look at how he dances away from the base on this steal from May, getting such a bold jump that the catcher had no chance to get him.

Basically, he gets the largest leads in baseball. When you combine Crow-Armstrong’s speed with the ability to get such a great head start on his way to the next base, you get a fantastic base stealer. For much of the season, he looked essentially unstoppable on the bases, and with the Cubs' reshuffled baserunning instruction group teaching him the art of the "momentum lead," he could become even more lethal in 2025. Not for nothing did they hire the man who created the website stealbases.com.

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Feel free to dig into the leaderboards yourself. What sticks out?

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