The 2025 Chicago Cubs Are Historically Good On The Base Paths

The Cubs have been a good baserunning team for quite a while now. Two seasons ago, they ranked eighth in baseball in FanGraphs’ baserunning runs above average metric (or BsR, for short). Last year, they were fifth.

This past offseason, the Cubs hired Quintin Berry away from the Milwaukee Brewers to serve as their first-base coach. Our own Matthew Trueblood wrote about this at the time, theorizing that this might have a huge influence on the already good defense and baserunning of the Cubs.

I am not sure if we want to call it the Quintin Berry Effect, or call it a new organizational philosophy. Regardless, it’s paying off handsomely. By stolen bases and the aforementioned BsR stat at FanGraphs, the Cubs are one of the best baserunning teams not just this season, but of all time. 

Let’s start with this season. The Cubs lead baseball with 44 steals. The next highest is the Milwaukee Brewers with 36. The Cubs have only been caught six times, too, so it’s not as if they’re accumulating steals due to reckless aggression. Arguably, they should be stealing more often given that success rate. 

They also lead baseball with 5.0 BsR. The next highest is the Mets at 3.6 BsR. The Cubs also lead in Baseball Savant’s baserunning run value. Any way you slice it, this is the best baserunning team in baseball. 

So, how does this compare to the best teams ever on the base paths? Having stolen 44 bases through 27 games heading into Saturday’s contest, the team is stealing 1.63 bases, on average, per game. Over a 162-game season, that would come out to 264 steals. The franchise record of 382 by the 1897 Colts, led by Bill Lange, who stole 73 bases, is likely out of reach. Fun fact about Lange: he went on to retire from baseball because his father-in-law would not allow his daughter to marry a professional baseball player. 

Back to the topic at hand, should the Cubs continue their pace and steal 264 bases this year, that would be the most in a season for the franchise since 1906. As a matter of fact, no team in the past 100 years of the franchise has even eclipsed 200 steals in a season. Their pace could slow considerably and the Cubs would still set the modern franchise record for steals in a season. 

As for BsR, prior to 2002, it was only based on stolen bases and times caught stealing, so FanGraphs cautions against using the stat prior to then. You can read more about the metric here.

Having been worth five runs in 27 games, the team has accumulated 0.19 runs on the bases per game. Over 162 games, that comes out to 30 BsR for the season. That would obliterate the franchise high since 2002, which is 15.1 BsR by the Kris Bryant-led 2015 team. 

Only one MLB team has eclipsed 30 BsR in a season since 2002, and that was Carl Crawford’s 2010 Rays, who put up 37.6 BsR. The next highest is the 2008 Phillies with 23.6 BsR. Again, they could fall behind the pace that they have set and still end up being the second-best baserunning team by BsR since 2002. 

It’s worth acknowledging that the baserunning environment is different across baseball. Stolen base attempts are up over the past few seasons due to a limit on pitcher disengagements and larger bases, thus shrinking the distance between each base. The Cubs, with players like Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nico Hoerner, and Kyle Tucker, are uniquely built to take advantage of this. Can they keep up this rapid early season pace? Will they be considered one of the best baserunning teams of all time?

I look forward to following this for the rest of the season. History or not, I will surely continue to enjoy the baserunning exploits of the mad-dashing 2025 Chicago Cubs.