Amazin’ Avenue: Kannengieser: Productive Base Stealing And The Mets

or…Don’t Be A Freakin’ Bobby Klaus Your Whole Life!

This is about as good as it gets.  Large quantities of stolen bases combined with high success rates.  Anecdotally, the Mets have made some memorable base stealing gaffes.  Jose Reyes getting thrown out at 3rd with 2 outs in a September 2007 game comes to mind immediately.  But as we all know, the Mets are not the only team that makes such mistakes and their are no “perfect” players who are never caught stealing. Who deserves credit for the great base stealing numbers?  The players, mostly.  It’s hard to laud to a coaching staff that has experienced so much turnover in such a brief period.  Carlos Beltran’s 86% success rate as a Met is crazy.  David Wright is at a commendable 79% success rate.  Reyes’s 80% rate is especially outstanding, considering he is always among the leaders in stolen bases.

Unfortunately, stolen base success is not enough to make up for a lack of good hitting, evidenced by the 2009 Mets.  A team of Juan Pierres might steal a ton of bases but won’t score many runs.  The Mets offense from 2006-2008 boasted a potent all-around attack: OBP, SLG, and valuable baserunning.  It’s fair to imagine that the OBP and baserunning portions of the offense will have continued success in 2010, given the (expected) returning players’ skill sets.  Let’s hope the SLG portion picks up the slack.

Lastly, it’s worth noting another outstanding team as far as stealing bases: the Philadelphia Phillies.  It is possible for a team to kill its opponents with both speed and power.  The 2 are not mutually exclusive and the latter is certainly more important.