Non-Red Sox Minor League Thread

But stolen bases only tell part of the story. The key figure was stolen-base attempts. Those Long Island Ducks tried to steal second approximately 20 percent of the time any runner reached first in the second half. The Somerset Patriots sent the runner on first an incredible 21.5 percent of the time. Those are huge, essentially unprecedented numbers – at least in modern big-league times.



Across the league, that figure averaged out to one SB attempt every 17.5 percent of the time a runner made it to first. In the first half, it was a mere 10.8 percent. That’s a jump of 62 percent.



So how does that compare to the brand of baseball you watch on TV every night? Ha. It doesn’t even look like the same sport. In the big leagues this season, the rate of attempts per times on first base is only 6.7 percent. That’s the lowest in almost six decades (since 1964).



But there isn’t any time in major-league history, since baseball began tracking all stolen-base attempts about a century ago, when the rate even remotely resembled what ensued in the Atlantic League in 2019. Even back in 1987, when Whitey Herzog’s “Runnin’ Redbirds” were swiping 248 bases and the sportwide stolen-base craze was at its highest level in the last 100 years, the rate of SB attempts per times on first came to only 12.4 percent.

...

“You had certain guys that always tried to steal. Like Darian Sanford, who played for the Barnstormers (and stole 74 bases). If he got on first base, in two pitches it was a triple….But it wasn’t just the speedsters that were running. Once that rule was in effect, it was anybody could run it all.”


...

“All this stuff, I’m not a fan of,” Royals super-utility wizard Whit Merrifield told The Athletic. “In my opinion, it’s just promoting laziness. It’s taking away the art of base-stealing and just saying, `OK, if you’re fast, you’ll be able to steal bases.’”