The return of the base thief

The one thing Tatum ignored: the third base coach’s box. That’s because Tatum, a speedy Chicago White Sox prospect with the Class A Winston-Salem Dash, didn’t require a “steal” sign from his third base coach. This season, for the first time in his pro career, he has the “green light” — permission to steal whenever he believes he can make it safely. It’s a gift that came with a few words of advice from the White Sox official who informed Tatum during spring training:

“You’d better take advantage,” the official said, according to Tatum, “and go.”

Major League Baseball launched a slate of rule changes in the big leagues this season, all to hasten the pace of the game and create more action. The most visible and scrutinized are the limitations on infield shifts and the introduction of the pitch clock to keep pitchers and batters from stalling.

But for prospects such as Tatum whose toolboxes include exceptional speed, the more significant changes were the ones designed in part to increase stolen base attempts: enlarged bases that reduce the distance between the edges of the bags by 4½ inches and especially the disengagement rule that limits a pitcher to two pickoff attempts or step-offs (which restart the pitch clock) per plate appearance.

The rules were used across the minors in 2022, so baseball officials had some insight into their effects. But their introduction this season to the major league game — in which change is usually both slow to come and permanent — has altered the way organizations value players’ ability to steal a base or keep their opponent from stealing one.

Almost instantly, Tatum, a 23-year-old outfielder, could sense that his career prospects had just gotten an immeasurable boost.

“I knew it right away,” Tatum said of the moment in September when news broke of MLB’s rule changes starting in 2023. “This was going to be huge for me. I knew I was going to be able to steal a lot more bases.”

Already this season, the results have been striking: Through May 9, MLB teams have attempted stolen bases at a rate of 0.90 per game, a 24 percent jump over last season — a year-over-year increase that roughly mirrors what the minor leagues experienced via the new rules in 2022 and which is the highest since 2012. The success rate of 78.6 percent this year, meanwhile, would rank as the highest in modern baseball history.

Baseball hasn’t seen a 50-steal season since 2017 (Dee Strange-Gordon, Billy Hamilton), a 70-steal season since 2009 (Jacoby Ellsbury) or an 80-steal season since 1988 (Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman). This year, Oakland’s Esteury Ruiz, with 17 steals in the Athletics’ first 37 games, was on a 74-steal pace through May 9, with a handful of other players close behind. And the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates, with 48 steals in the season’s first 37 games, were on pace for 210 this year, which would be the most by any team since the 1992 Milwaukee Brewers stole 256.

Meanwhile, in the high Class A South Atlantic League, Tatum — with 13 stolen bases in his first 23 games of 2023 (or 0.57 per game) — is stealing at a clip that is more than 40 percent higher than his rate during the first two years of his pro career.

During a recent game at Truist Stadium, the Dash’s 5,500-seat stadium in Winston-Salem, Tatum, on first base following a two-out single, waited patiently for his opportunity to take off for second. As he danced off the bag, he angled his body about 20 degrees toward second base, a tip given to him in college by fellow North Carolina State product Trea Turner, now a two-time stolen base champ. It affords him a split-second head-start on the pivot toward second.

Because the opposing pitcher for the Hickory Crawdads, a Texas Rangers affiliate, had a relatively quick delivery — 1.3 seconds, per the stopwatch, from the start of his motion to the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt — Tatum needed to be careful.

“If it’s above 1.3, I feel like that’s almost a free base,” he said later. “But 1.3 is pushing it. And anything lower, I have to make sure I have the perfect jump.”

Throughout the next at-bat, Tatum varied his leads and faked a move toward second, forcing the pitcher to step off the mound — the first disengagement. Two pitches later, a pickoff attempt: unsuccessful. That was the second disengagement. Everybody on the field seemed to know what was coming next. By rule, a third disengagement by the pitcher would have to result in a successful pickoff or else Tatum would be awarded second base via a balk.

“If the pitch clock is ticking down and you know [the pitcher] can’t throw over,” Tatum said, “you can basically just have the base. It’s a free stolen base every time.”

Sure enough, Tatum took off on the next pitch, with a 2-2 count, and had the base easily stolen — except that the batter swung through the fastball for strike three, ending the inning. Instead of standing on second and turning his attention toward stealing third, Tatum brushed the dirt off his uniform and prepared to head out to center field.

A dying art

The stolen base had been dying a slow and steady death for decades, with two primary killers.

The first was the growing influence of power pitching, with rising velocity and lab-designed breaking balls giving hitters little recourse except to match power with power and swing for the fences because teams were unlikely to score runs by stringing together singles against such nasty stuff. As home runs, walks and strikeouts rose in an increasingly all-or-nothing sport, almost everything else, from batting averages to sacrifice bunts to stolen bases, declined.

The second factor was the rise of the analytics movement, with its guiding principle that the risk of losing one precious out was significantly higher — roughly three times, as measured in run-expectancy — than the reward of a successful steal of second. An 80 percent success rate on steals — or roughly the career rate of Henderson, the sport’s all-time stolen base king — became the accepted benchmark for whether it made sense to run. And because few players could steal at such a rate, few were allowed to try.

“There’s a rule on this club. It’s okay if you get [the stolen base]. If you don’t, you got hell to pay,” then-Oakland Athletics third base coach Ron Washington explains to veteran Ray Durham near the end of “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’s seminal 2003 book about the Billy Beane-era A’s and the rise of the analytics movement. “… Somebody on this team runs and gets his ass thrown out, and you got all kinds of gurus who tell you that you just took yourself out of the inning.”

From the modern peak of 5,114 stolen base attempts in 1987, the numbers gradually dropped, bottoming out with just 2,924 in 2021 (not counting shortened seasons) — a 43 percent falloff. That same year, almost four decades after Henderson set the single-season record with 130 steals for the 1982 A’s, Turner led the National League with just 32.

In announcing the 2023 rule changes in September, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs general manager Theo Epstein admitted “people like me” — data-obsessed executives looking to exploit every micro-efficiency in the name of winning — had largely driven the deterioration of the game’s aesthetics. “While it might have helped you win some more games, it didn’t necessarily change the game for the better for the fans in terms of the way the game is played on the field,” Epstein said.

Taken as a whole, then, MLB’s new rules for 2023 are an attempt to inject back into the game some of what had been lost over the previous decades — with the stolen base receiving a singular focus. Baseball officials have said its focus groups and polling indicated fans wanted more action — and specifically stolen bases — back in the game.

“Let’s give the fans more of what they like,” Epstein said, singling out “the running game.”

It certainly gave a player such as Tatum more of what he likes. Before this year, he said, he felt stymied by the White Sox’s unwillingness to let him run, even complaining to a team official last summer. “Y’all aren’t letting me steal,” he said then. “That’s a big part of my game.”

It was that same official who, during this year’s spring training, told Tatum the organization was giving him the green light for 2023 — and implored him to take advantage.

“I feel I’m a hitter first,” Tatum said. “But if I don’t crush the ball — if I hit a dribbler up the third base line, I can turn that into a hit with my speed. And then steal second. So if I get on base with a walk or a bunt or a swinging bunt, I have a chance to turn that into a double. The new rules just allow me to play my complete game.”

‘They’re going to run wild’

The math behind the stolen base has been more or less the same since Henderson’s days: A speedy base runner can go from reacting to a pitcher’s first move to touching second base in about 3.3 seconds. A pitcher who is quick to the plate can get the ball to his catcher in about 1.3 seconds. A catcher with a good arm and solid mechanics can get the ball from his mitt to the second base bag in about 2.0.

The fact that 1.3 plus 2.0 equals 3.3 — a dead tie — is what makes the stolen base such a daring and beautiful act of athleticism. It was also one of the things that made baseball great. Put a runner on first who is a tick faster than 3.3 seconds and a catcher behind the plate who is sub-2.0 — Henderson against Iván “Pudge” Rodriguez, say — and you had one of the great individual matchups in the sport, the anticipation rising with every pitch.

But in a sport such as baseball, with its many intricacies and nuances, even the smallest changes — such as tilting the base-stealing dynamic ever so slightly in the direction of the runner — are bound to have significant downstream effects, including assigning additional value to players with certain skill sets.

It won’t be enough to turn a one-tool prospect into a future MLB star, especially when the baseline for adding extra value in a sport with more stolen bases across the board only will rise.

But take a player with exceptional speed who is also a solid and improving defensive center fielder and a hitter with sneaky power and excellent strike-zone awareness who has gotten on base in both college and minor league ball at a clip of .400-plus — a player such as Tatum — and it can be a game changer. Maybe he gets to the big leagues sooner. Maybe he sticks longer. Maybe he has a chance to be a regular instead of a role player or a star instead of a platoon guy.

“There’s going to be some change” in how teams value players, said Chris Getz, who played seven years in the majors and is now the White Sox’s assistant general manager for player development. “Perhaps the 26th man [on a roster] might look differently this year as in years past. It’s going to affect transactions as well. It might factor into who you’re going to add, a call-up or trade acquisition, knowing that speed could be a real weapon for the club.

“When it comes to the future projection of players, I could see the run tool being weighted differently than it was two years ago. And I think this has the chance to elongate the careers of certain players.”

But as with every small change to the offensive side of baseball, there is an opposite effect on the defensive side. When it comes to run prevention and specifically stopping the opponent from stealing bases, the task has grown substantially more difficult.

Already, there is anecdotal evidence the new rules are affecting reliever usage late in games, with Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts acknowledging, “If you don’t have the ability to manage the running game, then you’re not a viable option to come into an inning with runners on base.”

The game is already different. On April 29, the Dodgers won a 1-0 game over the St. Louis Cardinals with the only run scoring in the second inning on a single, a stolen base and another single — the type of small-ball rally that had nearly gone extinct by the end of 2022.

“It’s stuff we’re thinking about and talking about all the time,” said Josh Byrnes, the Dodgers’ senior vice president of baseball operations. “I remember this spring, [pitching coach] Mark Prior told our pitchers, ‘Okay, fellas, everyone needs to be 1.3 [seconds] or faster to the plate now.’ You haven’t had to spend as much energy on that in the past, but now you do. It’s in your face. If you’re not on point, they’re going to run wild on you.”

Byrnes predicted such conversations would filter down to the draft, perhaps altering the way teams value certain tools in making their picks.

“These are topics we haven’t had to discuss in a long time,” he said. “Trying to steal bases and defend the stolen base are bigger parts of the game now, and that affects player-personnel decisions. Even in the draft, guys who are above-average runners are going to be more prominent. Catchers with the ability to throw out runners are going to be more prominent. There are players who all of a sudden are better major league prospects in today’s atmosphere.”

One of those prospects, it stands to reason, is Tatum. Drafted by the White Sox in the 16th round in 2021, he has never been considered a phenom. In MLB.com’s recent list of the White Sox’s top prospects, he ranked just 25th. Baseball America rated him 24th. FanGraphs’ list was 26-deep and did not include Tatum.

Tatum said he had been given a season-long green light only once before in his career: as a junior at N.C. State in 2020. That year, in a season shortened by the pandemic, he went 7 for 7 in stolen base attempts.

He still has fewer than 100 games and 400 plate appearances as a professional, largely the result of a positive test for an amphetamine last year that resulted in a 50-game suspension, plus an ankle injury that cut short his stint in the Arizona Fall League.

The sudden boost to his career, in the form of a rule change that works in his favor, came at the perfect time.

“For me, Tatum is a guy who can run on 1.3,” said White Sox field coordinator Doug Sisson, speaking of an opposing pitcher’s time to home plate. Part of Sisson’s job is working with the White Sox’s minor leaguers on the intricacies of base running. “If you face teams that are really good at shutting down the running game, teams where every pitcher is 1.2, you may not see us run for a few games. You can’t outrun the ball, and you can’t outrun the stopwatch.”

One recent afternoon at Truist Stadium, Sisson worked with Tatum and the other Dash position players on ancillary (or secondary) leads — the initial movements toward second base that a runner takes just as the pitcher commits to delivering the pitch.

“The advantage of getting a good ancillary lead is to try to get two disengagements early in the at-bat,” Sisson said. “Because then you’re off to the races.”

It is one more subtle way in which the game has tilted in favor of the base runner. Because pickoff throws are now a finite quantity thanks to the disengagement rule, there is now an incentive for a base runner to rattle the pitcher in hopes of drawing a throw over. It happens to be something for which Tatum has shown some aptitude.

“This is a guy who has major league tools,” Sisson said. “He’s going to be a good major league player.”