Caught stealing above average stat breakdown

This stuff is fantastic. Hopefully, they plan on expanding such breakdowns to other positions. We already know who has the strongest arms. Anyone who has ever played knows it’s not just the arm strength. So who is the most accurate? Who combines both?

The same is true in the infield. How much impact does a great receiving 1B have? Who is the best at scooping throws?

Now, I imagine the impact isn’t great but finding out who is good at these skills is still helpful as I have found that incremental improvements in a lot of areas add up. It also might help us better appreciate a good 1B playing in front of a scatter-armed infield.

So Smith, currently sidelined as he works his way back from concussion symptoms, looks like he’s a pretty poor preventer of stolen bases, having cut down just one of the eight basestealers he’s seen, an unimpressive 11% rate that’s less than half of the 25% mark he had two seasons ago. (It’s actually worse than that: He hasn’t thrown out anyone, but instead got credit when Julio Urías picked off Mike Yastrzemski.)

Except … wait a minute. We know Syndergaard is extremely poor at holding runners on; he’s talked about this, openly, for years, and last year, 30 of 33 basestealers were successful against him. We know that Carroll isn’t just “very fast,” he is “literally the fastest.” Maybe it’s not so much that Smith didn’t do his job. Maybe it’s that the job he was given wasn’t possible to do.

Maybe, as 2013 NL stolen-base champion Eric Young Jr. once said, echoing the thoughts of a century’s worth of backstops, “You’re usually always stealing off the pitcher. Catchers … you know it doesn’t matter if he has a good arm. If you get a good jump off the pitcher, the catcher’s not going to be able to catch up.”