Who are the professional thieves (base stealers) and who are the top cops (catchers)? How do we differentiate professional from amateur? Do arrests by the constabulary (caught stealing by the catcher) measure greatness in a backstop or is it pure ineptness by the thief?

An analysis of Retrosheet data from 1963-2004 was performed to answer these and other questions. During the data period there were 174,570 stolen base attempts (SBA) involving 61,131 runner-catcher match-ups. The breakdown of these SBA’s is:

 

Table 1. Stolen Base Attempts By Base

 

 

To separate the professional thief from the amateur, all 3,223 runners’ efforts were categorized by their success or failure at each base. Because the success rate at stealing 3^rd or home was lower than the theft rate of 2^nd, the top 1% of the runners who attempted 3^rd or home were selected out and designated as the professional thieves. As expected, the usual suspects (Henderson, Brock, Coleman, Carew, and Raines) made the list of 32. (See Table 8).

The success rate for all runners attempting to steal 3^rd base was 71.6%. Of the 32 professional thieves, only four had a worse rate than the MLB average. These gone-to-the-well-too-often guys were Lou Brock, Brett Butler, Jose Cardenal, and Rod Carew. The player that had the best success-rate at stealing 3^rd was Roberto Alomar with 89.0% (138 out of 155 attempts). The worst professional was Rod Carew with 59.3% (32 out of 54 tries). The most attempts were tried by Rickey Henderson (403) and the fewest attempts by a professional goes to Rod Carew (54).

How well did our professionals do compared to the 3,191 amateurs? Even though our professionals represented only 1% of all thieves, they accounted for 18.8% of all successful thefts of 3^rd base. Their success rate was 13% better than the amateurs as the following table shows.

Table 2. Professionals vs. Amateurs in 3^rd Base Thefts

 

 

The master thieves among the professionals were the ones that tried a theft of home. In the data sample there were 1,413 different thieves that attempted this feat. Only 794 were successful at least once or slightly more than half (56.2%). Among our 32 professionals, nearly a third (10) had an average worse than the whole sample (37.4%). The most attempts were tried by Rod Carew (30) and the fewest attempts by our professionals was 1 by Kirk Gibson.

The most successful thefts of home were 20 by Rod Carew. However, this is far short of the MLB record of 54 by Ty Cobb. In fact Carew’s total is only good for ninth on the all-time list.

Again, we can compare the professionals against the amateurs when it comes to racing home. The elite 1% captured 8.6% of all of the steals of home, which was only half as good as their 3^rd base nabbing. The pros success rate was 15% better than the amateurs.

Table 3. Professionals vs. Amateurs in Stealing Home

 

 

Now let’s turn to the constabulary, the ones whose job it is to catch those pesty base stealers. In our data sample there were 630 different catchers. To determine who were the top cops a criteria of a minimum of 275 nabbed thieves was established. For this study caught stealing also included pickoffs of the runners when the catcher threw to the base. The criteria yielded 35 catchers or 5.5% of the total backstops, which are now labeled as top cops. (See Table 9).

The success rate of these top cops at catching thieves at all bases was 33.5% as compared to the beat cops rate of 26.1% or the total sample of 27.9%. Even though our top cops only represented 5.5% of the constabulary, they made 29.9% of the arrests.

Table 4. Top Cops vs. Beat Cops at Nabbing Thieves

 

 

Did the high success rate of stopping crime on the bases detour our thieves? No. The top cops were involved in 25% of all of the attempts at thievery. Who caught the most? That honor belongs to Gary Carter who nabbed 772 runners. Who among our top cops had the fewest? That was Rich Gedman with 276. The best percentage of catching base stealers is owned by Ivan Rodriguez (48.4%) and the worst record is held by Mike Piazza (20.8%).

 

How did our top cops fair at the various bases? The following table provides the answer. (Pickoffs shown but not included in the totals.)

 

Table 5. Top Cops Record at the Bases

 

 

The next logical step is a side-by-side comparison of the professional thieves’ success rate at the various bases as compared to the top cops. [It should be remembered that the thieves’ record is against all catchers and that the top cops’ record is against all thieves.] Table 6 entries for the catchers have been “flipped over” (SB rate versus CS rate) to provide a quick illustration without having to do the math.

 

Table 6. Professional Thieves vs. Top Cops

 

 

On the average, the top cops are 14.9% better at catching all thieves than are the professional thieves at stealing against all cops. It appears that, generally, crime doesn’t pay.

The last, and obvious, question is how did the 32 professional thieves do against the 35 top cops in a head-to-head match? The answer will have to be given in another article. But, to round out this study I have selected just one match-up out of the thousands in the data. Taking the Number 1 Professional Thief (Roberto Alomar) against the Number 1 Top Cop (Ivan Rodriguez), the results of the match-up yield:

 

Table 7. Alomar vs. Rodriguez

 

Although the sample is very small, one can opine that the top cop (Rodriguez) got the better of the professional thief (Alomar) in their 18 confrontations. However, Alomar was successful 61.1% of the time compared to all other runners who only managed a theft 51.6% of the time against Rodriguez. But, the professional thief met his nemesis in Rodriguez because Alomar was used to stealing 80.9% of his attempts. His success rate dropped 20% which seems to say, once again, that crime doesn’t pay when a runner is up against the top cops.

 

Table 8. Professional Thieves

 

Runner	SBA3	SB3%	SBAH	SBH%	SBp	CSp	SBAp	SBp%
Roberto Alomar	155	0.890	3	0.333	139	19	158	0.880
Bert Campaneris	153	0.889	2	0.000	136	19	155	0.877
Eric Davis	111	0.883	2	0.000	98	15	113	0.867
Devon White	78	0.872	3	0.667	70	11	81	0.864
Vince Coleman	223	0.879	9	0.444	200	32	232	0.862
Marquis Grissom	109	0.862	4	0.750	97	16	113	0.858
Omar Vizquel	107	0.860	5	0.800	96	16	112	0.857
Barry Larkin	144	0.875	7	0.429	129	22	151	0.854
Davey Lopes	107	0.860	9	0.667	98	18	116	0.845
Paul Molitor	117	0.855	16	0.750	112	21	133	0.842
Tony Gwynn	101	0.861	6	0.500	90	17	107	0.841
Chuck Knoblauch	85	0.835	2	1.000	73	14	87	0.839
Rickey Henderson	403	0.836	12	0.667	345	70	415	0.831
Otis Nixon	145	0.848	7	0.429	126	26	152	0.829
Tim Raines	101	0.842	8	0.500	89	20	109	0.817
Craig Biggio	137	0.818	3	0.667	114	26	140	0.814
Barry Bonds	109	0.835	6	0.333	93	22	115	0.809
Willie Wilson	88	0.818	3	0.333	73	18	91	0.802
Jeff Bagwell	76	0.789	5	0.800	64	17	81	0.790
Delino DeShields	100	0.810	4	0.250	82	22	104	0.788
Larry Bowa	83	0.819	13	0.538	75	21	96	0.781
Kenny Lofton	141	0.794	5	0.400	114	32	146	0.781
Ozzie Smith	106	0.849	15	0.200	93	28	121	0.769
Eric Young	108	0.787	10	0.500	90	28	118	0.763
Kirk Gibson	79	0.759	1	0.000	60	20	80	0.750
Billy North	89	0.742	2	0.500	67	24	91	0.736
Larry Walker	81	0.778	12	0.250	66	27	93	0.710
Lou Brock	83	0.711	3	0.667	61	25	86	0.709
Brett Butler	87	0.713	8	0.625	67	28	95	0.705
Steve Sax	87	0.747	8	0.250	67	28	95	0.705
Jose Cardenal	80	0.700	22	0.545	68	34	102	0.667
Rod Carew	54	0.593	30	0.667	52	32	84	0.619

 

 

 

Table 9. Top Cops

 

Catcher	SB	CS	PK	CSPK	SBA	CS%
Ivan Rodriguez	534	424	76	500	1034	0.484
Thurman Munson	533	394	38	432	965	0.448
Johnny Bench	556	384	47	431	987	0.437
Bob Boone	1108	637	77	714	1822	0.392
Jim Sundberg	1012	578	63	641	1653	0.388
Steve Yeager	595	319	44	363	958	0.379
Charles Johnson	517	287	10	297	814	0.365
Rick Dempsey	770	415	25	440	1210	0.364
Manny Sanguillen	498	267	15	282	780	0.362
Lance Parrish	1043	557	29	586	1629	0.360
John Stearns	500	258	21	279	779	0.358
Butch Wynegar	708	370	13	383	1091	0.351
Darrell Porter	902	459	26	485	1387	0.350
Gary Carter	1498	716	56	772	2270	0.340
Bill Freehan	716	344	20	364	1080	0.337
Brad Ausmus	698	340	13	353	1051	0.336
Milt May	724	346	12	358	1082	0.331
Terry Steinbach	765	367	7	374	1139	0.328
Ted Simmons	1188	547	32	579	1767	0.328
Mike Heath	571	273	5	278	849	0.327
Benito Santiago	995	426	52	478	1473	0.325
Tony Pena	1224	545	39	584	1808	0.323
Rick Cerone	705	323	13	336	1041	0.323
Jody Davis	815	367	21	388	1203	0.323
Pat Borders	608	277	10	287	895	0.321
Carlton Fisk	1302	578	22	600	1902	0.315
Rich Gedman	633	262	14	276	909	0.304
Bruce Benedict	772	329	6	335	1107	0.303
Bo Diaz	686	281	16	297	983	0.302
Mike Scioscia	952	381	23	404	1356	0.298
Ernie Whitt	691	282	9	291	982	0.296
Joe Girardi	798	300	3	303	1101	0.275
Terry Kennedy	1051	362	15	377	1428	0.264
Alan Ashby	1112	379	13	392	1504	0.261
Mike Piazza	1221	315	6	321	1542	0.208

Data Source:

 

Retrosheet (A.L. Only) 1963, 1965-68; (A.L. & N.L.) 1969-2004

Special thanks to SABR Member, David Smith who has provided me millions of event records over the years and without whom this study could not have been accomplished.