Adam Frazier Should Steal More Bases
Adam Frazier is the starting second basemen for the Pittsburgh Pirates. This season, he has 2 stolen bases in 3 attempts. For his career, Frazier has 16 stolen bases in 26 attempts. He should try to steal more bases.
The Pittsburgh Pirates don’t, as a team, attempt very many steals. In fact, Frazier’s two stolen bases are good enough to tie him for third on the team, behind Starling Marte, who has 4, and Erik Gonzalez, who has 3, but will struggle to add to that total from his current position on the 60 day IL.
On the season, the Pirates have 13 stolen bases in 17 attempts, that makes them just below average in both steals and successful steal percentage. (The worst team in baseball is the Philadelphia Phillies, who have 6 steals in 10 attempts for the whole season.)
Helpfully, Baseball Almanac has a list of the total number of stolen bases by year dating back more than 100 seasons. Based on that data, it’s really hard to make some sort of sweeping generalized statement like ‘the stolen base has fallen out of favor among MLB teams,’ but, anecdotally, the stolen base has fallen out of favor among MLB teams lately. In this era of OBP and home runs getting all the focus, it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to risk losing a runner on the bases in an attempt to move him into scoring position if the goal is for him to just jog home once the next guy puts one in the seats.
Between 2015 and 2017, total steals in the MLB topped out at 2,537. As far as I can tell, that’s the lowest 3 year high since the late 1970s.
And yet, Adam Frazier should steal more bases.
In addition to being slightly below average in steals, the Pirates, who are in one of baseball’s toughest divisions, are third to last in the MLB in home runs, ahead of only the Detroit Tigers and Miami Marlins, neither of whom are trying to win even 70 times this season.
In an era when the most successful teams are trying to out homer each other, that seems like a bad idea. Josh Bell leads the team with 8 bombs, but no else has more than 4. It seems like the Pirates, who have a reputation over the last few seasons as a scrappy team that has, by and large, successfully competed against division rivals with much deeper pockets like the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals for most of the last decade, should try and zig where everyone else is zagging.
The Milwaukee Brewers just did this! Like the 2019 Pirates, the 2018 Brewers saw the Cards and Cubs and realized that they needed a gimmick to beat them. The Brewers emphasized their bullpen and rode an unorthodox approach to pitching all the way to the NLCS last season.
The Brewers though, had a pretty conventional home run focused offense.
The Pirates don’t have the bullpen options that Brewers do and they don’t have the powerful lineup (though they have some good starters) , so they’ll have to be a bit creative. I think they should play small ball, go against the 2019 grain, and steal some bases. I think their leadoff hitter and second basemen, Adam Frazier, should lead the way.
Frazier has, I will admit, never been a prolific base stealer. Billy Hamilton he is not. His career high in the majors or minor for steals in a season is 17. Perhaps, this is because he’s not that fast.
Below is a chart of Pittsburgh Pirates’ sprint speeds relative to league average. That red dotted line that’s labeled ‘League Avg.’ is the league average. That green dot in the 2B row is Adam Frazier.
As you can see, Frazier is a below average runner for a second baseman. (Tops among second basemen is Garrett Hampson and at the bottom is Joe Panik, in case you were wondering.) But he’s not that far from average! And he’s way faster than the vast majority of catchers, first basemen and third basemen. Sure, he’s no center fielder but with a good jump, he can swipe a bag or two.
And that’s the key, stealing bases isn’t really about speed. Speed helps, certainly, and speed is useful for covering up mistakes, but stealing bases is really about picking spots, timing pitchers, and getting good jumps. There’s a lot of innate ability in that, yes, but it’s something you can practice.
According to this chart, Adam Frazier has the same average sprint speed as Paul Goldschmidt, a first basemen. While Goldschmidt has not attempted a steal this season and was just 7 for 11 last year, he stole 18 bags in 2017, 32 (!) in 2016, and 21 in 2015! It’s possible that Goldschmidt has lost a step since then, but he’s still just 31 so I don’t think he’s a completely different runner today than he was just 3 years ago.
Frazier can do this. I believe in him. He should steal more bases.
-Max Frankel
