Most people, when asked who was the better basestealer, Maury Wills or Ozzie Smith, would choose Wills. Or at least most people born before 1950. But Wills and Smith stole virtually the same number of bases (586 for Wills, 580 for Smith), while Ozzie was thrown out significantly fewer times (148 for Smith, 208 for Wills). We're often told how many bases are stolen, but we're rarely told how many bases were not stolen.
Here are the five most prolific basestealers in major league history:
Former Expos burner Tim Raines is fifth on the all-time list.
SB CS Pct
Ri. Henderson 1406 335 80.7
Lou Brock 938 307 75.3
Billy Hamilton 912 ???
Ty Cobb 892 ???
Tim Raines 808 146 84.7
Not many would consider Tim Raines in Lou Brock's class . . . but, based on the bases they stole and those they didn't, one could argue that it's Brock who wasn't in Raines' class.
More on that below. In the meantime, what do we do with Sliding Billy Hamilton and Ty Cobb? On Thursday I wrote about exciting baserunners, and led off the discussion with Cobb. According to Hall of Famer Sam Thompson, who played with both of them, Hamilton, a star in the 1890s, was "more daring and reckless" than Cobb. He stole more bases than Cobb, too. Unfortunately, we have no information about how many times Hamilton was caught trying to steal, and the data for Cobb are incomplete.
What's more, during much of Hamilton's career, "stolen base" was defined differently than it is today. From 1892 through 1897, steals were also awarded if 1) a baserunner advanced an extra base on a batted ball (say, first to third on a single), and 2) the fielders made, in the opinion of the official scorer, at least some effort to retire the runner. Whether this led to 50 extra steals per season for somebody like Hamilton, or 20, nobody really knows.
There's a popular and incredibly misguided belief that somehow if you're caught stealing it doesn't really count. But it does count. When a player is caught stealing, his team loses two incredibly important things: a baserunner, and an out.
In the real world, though, everybody understands this on a gut level. Today the break-even point -- that is, the point at which the benefit of stealing a base matches the risk -- is roughly 70 percent. That figure moves up and down depending on what else is happening in the sport, but 70 percent is a pretty good baseline. And wouldn't you know it, last year major leaguers were successful 70 percent of the time. When the success rate edges much below 70 percent, managers will put the brakes on. When the success rate gets much higher, the pitchers will pay more attention to the runners and the catchers will have trouble getting work if they can't throw. It's actually one of the more elegant nuances in the game.
Does all this mean that a player who steals eight bases while being caught once is a better basestealer than a player who steals 40 bases but is caught 20 times? Perhaps, on a theoretical level. But if you need a runner at second base in the ninth inning, which one of these guys will you ask to pinch-run? Probably the second of them. The best basestealers are both prolific and highly successful.
And there's a measure for exactly this. "Stolen Base Runs," a method devised by Pete Palmer and based on the assumption that 66 percent is roughly the break-even point, weights the steals and the caughts to arrive at the number of runs all those attempts really led to. From the 2004 edition of Total Baseball, here are the eight players with at least 60 career Stolen Base Runs:
Rickey is the gold standard when it comes to steals that lead to runs.
SB SBR
Ri. Henderson 1406 159
Tim Raines 808 112
Willie Wilson 668 87
Vince Coleman 752 86
Joe Morgan 689 79
Davey Lopes 557 71
Lou Brock 938 68
Ozzie Smith 580 61
And Ty Cobb? He's not listed above because we don't have caught-stealing data for most of his big seasons. However, we do know that over the course of four seasons (1909, and 1914-1916) in the prime of his career, Cobb was successful 72 percent of the time . . . which of course is just slightly better than the break-even point.
With walks and long hits in relatively short supply, a runner on first base just wasn't all that valuable (granted, it didn't take as many runs to win a game in those days). What's more, we can assume that stolen-base attempts resulted in errors with some not-insignificant frequency. So perhaps the break-even rate was not only lower than 70 percent, but significantly lower. But Cobb was actually ineffective when stealing bases over the last eight or nine seasons of his career, and if he was successful only 72 percent of the time during his prime, then he simply wasn't adding huge numbers of runs to the bottom line. Given reasonable assumptions about Cobb's success rates, we might conclude that he finished his career with 10.4 Stolen Base Runs.
Again, that's probably not a fair representation of Cobb's actual value when stealing bases . . . but 10.4 is a long, long ways from Rickey Henderson's 159. Cobb might have been the best basestealer of his time -- we just don't have enough CS data to know -- but it's just not likely that he put as many runs on the scoreboard as did the basestealing stars of the 1970s and '80s.
The first great basestealer that we can confidently identify is Max Carey, who reached the majors in 1910 and spent most of his career with the Pirates. We're missing CS for seven of Carey's full seasons, but the available evidence suggests that he was successful nearly 80 percent of the time, which alone would make him one of the elite runners ever. And he was prolific, too. Carey led the National League in steals 10 times; only Henderson, who led his league 12 times, has topped Carey in that regard. I've estimated that Carey finished with 70 Stolen Base Runs, which would place him eighth on the all-time list.
George Case had a nice run from 1939 through '46 (331 Steals, 27 Stolen Base Runs), but after Case nobody would steal even 60 bases in one season until 1962, when Maury Wills set a modern standard with 104 steals. That looked like a fluke when Wills stole only 40 bases in '63 and 53 in '64, but then he swiped 94 bases in 1965. And like Case, Wills wound up leading the National League six times. But they weren't the only ones; Ty Cobb, Bert Campaneris, and Vince Coleman all led their leagues six times. Lou Brock led his league eight times, and Luis Aparicio did it nine times. Aparicio, Wills, Campaneris, and Brock all starred in the 1960s, and it's difficult to choose one over the others.
With the exception of Brock's continuing career, the 1970s were a relatively fallow period for steals . . . but the 1980s more than made up for the '70s, as speedsters like Willie Wilson, Vince Coleman, Tim Raines, and especially Rickey Henderson were not only prolific, but prolifically successful. In fact, through the 2003 season, there were 30 players who'd been successful on at least 78 percent of their career steal attempts, and all but one of them (Aparicio) played in the 1980s.
With that in mind, and with the benefit of a few back-of-the-envelope figurings, here's my list of the greatest basestealers in major league history:
1. Rickey Henderson
2. Tim Raines
3. Vince Coleman
4. Joe Morgan
5. Max Carey
6. Willie Wilson
7. Ty Cobb
8. Lou Brock
9. Davey Lopes
10. Billy Hamilton
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