Julio Rodríguez Joins What Could Become a Bumper Crop of 30-30 Players

Rodríguez is the second player to reach 30-30 this season, after Acuña, who hit his 30th homer on August 31 to go with what was then 61 steals (he added his 62nd later in that game). That was already an unprecedented combination, and with six homers and three steals since, he’s up to 36 of the former and 65 of the latter, with sights set on the first 40-70 season in major league history. Meanwhile, four other players currently have at least 25 homers and 25 steals, giving them reasonable shots of reaching 30 in both categories, and two others have an outside chance of crashing the party as well….

What’s driving this year’s potential bumper crop is the return of the stolen base thanks to the new rules — namely the pitch clock, the limit on pickoff throws, and the slightly larger bases — at a time when home run rates are near their all-time high. Stolen base attempts per game are up 32% over last year, from 0.68 per game to 0.9 (note that all of these rates are expressed as per team per game). We haven’t seen players run this often since 2011, when they attempted 0.93 steals per game, and only one other time in this millennium have they been above 0.9 (2001, also 0.93), where they were above 1.0 annually from 1975–97. With stolen base success rates at an all-time high of 80.1%, successful steals per game are up 40% over last year, from 0.51 per game to 0.72, the highest rate since 1997 (0.73).