The Cincinnati Reds tried to push the envelope a lot in 2024 under manager David Bell. The team had some speed to work with – including the self proclaimed fastest man alive. As a team they were thrown out on the bases a lot, but gained some extra bases with their aggressiveness, too.
This morning the folks at MLB added a new set of leaderboards over on the Statcast page with regards to baserunning. It won’t help us determine whether or not the team did well when it comes to trying to take an extra base when the ball was put in play. But it will help us determine how well the team did when it comes to stolen bases.
When it comes down to the team as a whole, the Reds were third best in all of baseball with 50 net bases gained. That trailed only the Milwaukee Brewers (+68) and Washington Nationals (+60). So when it comes to the team numbers, Cincinnati did indeed do well.
That doesn’t really tell the whole story, though. The Reds had Elly De La Cruz on their team. He was at +40 net bases gained all on his own. That would have been third in baseball if he were a team (and we removed the Reds from the data set). The Chicago Cubs, for example, were 4th in baseball and had +31 as a team.
Still, even taking De La Cruz off of the Reds numbers, they were still at +10, which would have been 10th in baseball. That would lead us to the conclusion that even outside of the teams best basestealer, the Reds were still quite good at stealing bases and providing value there.
The Elly De La Cruz Data
Let’s start with Elly De La Cruz, who probably deserves his own article given some of the things he did and where he stands in some of these categories. Here is where he ranked in baseball in the various categories added to the new Statcast leaderboards:
- Net Bases Gained (+40) – 1st
- Bases Gained vs Average (+50) – 1st
- Bases Gained (+58) – 1st
- Run Value on Steals (+6) – 2nd (tie)
- Outs Created (12) – 522nd
- Lead distance on stolen base attempts (8.9 feet) – 385th
No surprise, of course, that the guy who led baseball in steals ranks very highly in plenty of categories. The low ranking in the outs created category also shouldn’t be much of a surprise. You have to try and steal a lot to get caught a lot. And when you get caught that’s a big negative.
But what’s really interesting here is the lead distance. Elly De La Cruz is 6′ 5″ tall. His average lead on a stolen base is about the length of him laying on the ground with his arm stretched out to touch first base. There is some bad data in the 385th ranking overall because the data is only for stolen base attempts. Max Muncy leads the way at +25.7 feet. That came on his only steal of the year in which the pitcher never acknowledged him and he had a running lead by the time the pitcher even lifted his leg to start his motion to the plate. Much of the top 50 is made up of plays like that.
With that said, De La Cruz is not getting a good lead. There were 35 players in baseball who were at least +10 net bases gained in the 2024 season. Among that group, De La Cruz was tied for last place with Brenton Doyle. They were the only two players under the 9-foot mark. Only Johan Rojas was also under the 10-foot mark. Anthony Volpe was atop the leaderboard at 15.1 feet – nearly two feet ahead of second place Zach Neto (13.2 feet). The average for all of baseball was 11.5 feet.
What that suggests is that if Elly De La Cruz can get a bigger lead – something he should be able to do given his reach for when he has to dive back to the bag and the fact that nearly everyone else is getting a bigger lead than he is and thus we know it’s something you can get away with – that he should be able to steal more bases even if he doesn’t attempt more often because with a little less distance between himself and the next base he should turn a few caught stealings into a few steals.
The Individual Data
When it comes to net bases gained there were seven other players who were on the positive side of the ledger for the Reds. There were two guys sitting at zero. And there were six more on the negative side.
Santiago Espinal and Jake Fraley were both at +6, while Spencer Steer (+4), Stuart Fairchild (+3), TJ Friedl and Will Benson (+2), and Noelvi Marte (+1). On the opposite side of that was a trio of guys who really didn’t do well here. Tyler Stephenson was at -8, while Jeimer Candelario was at -5, and Nick Martini was at -4. These numbers are versus the average player, so in the case of a guy like Stephenson who didn’t attempt a steal all year, he wound up at -11 in the bases gained category, but since he was never caught he got a +3 on that side and wound up at -8.
Elly De La Cruz was at +4o net bases gained, as noted above. And that was worth +6 runs for the Reds. No one else on the team was better than +1 (Espinal, Steer, Fairchild). At the other end no one was more than -1 run (Stephenson, Candelario, Martini, Marte).
When it comes to the lead on stolen base attempts, let’s look at the nine players who attempted at least 10 steals for Cincinnati this year:
- Noelvi Marte – 12.6 feet
- Santiago Espinal – 11.9 feet
- Spencer Steer – 11.8 feet
- TJ Friedl – 10.9 feet
- Stuart Fairchild – 10.5 feet
- Jake Fraley – 10.3 feet
- Jonathan India – 9.5 feet
- Will Benson – 9.5 feet
- Elly De La Cruz – 8.9 feet
The average lead on stolen base attempts was 11.5 feet. As a group, the Reds didn’t exactly do well here with only three players above-average here. They also had three players two feet below the average lead distance. This seems like an area that the team could improve on next season.
The post How good were Elly De La Cruz and the Reds at stealing in 2024? appeared first on Redleg Nation.