Bobby Witt Jr. needs to adjust his base stealing process for better results

Bobby Witt Jr. is a unicorn baseball player. He’s immensely talented, hugely skilled, and just so happens to seem to be a great clubhouse presence and inherent leader of people. The Kansas City Royals haven’t seen anything like him since peak Zack Greinke at the very least, and there are a bunch of statistics that you can point at to show his brilliance—my current favorite is that Witt is on pace to accrue more than half of Alex Gordon’s career WAR total by the end of this year. Witt, as a reminder, just turned 24 years old.

One of Witt’s most impressive tools is his speed. Per Statcast figures, Witt is the fastest player in baseball, quite a feat considering the athleticism of the league as a whole. As a result, Witt likes to steal a lot, and he has the second-most steals of any player since 2022.

But steals are a counting metric, and they only represent the success side of the equation. The other side of the coin is that no player in baseball has been caught stolen more than Witt. And considering the lack of on base ability around Witt, these instances are really painful.

Take Thursday, for example. Alec Marsh only lasted three innings and every member of the bullpen let the Tampa Bay Rays add onto their run total. But the offense fought back. In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Royals scored three to claw to within two runs of the Rays. Witt had just singled, placing the tying run at first and the go-ahead run—Vinnie Pasquantino—with two outs. On the first pitch of Vinnie’s plate appearance, he tried to steal second and was thrown out.

It was a poor decision all around. With two outs, avoiding the double play ball was irrelevant, and Witt would be sprinting on contact anyway and would likely have scored on most hits. It killed the inning and effectively ended the game (though Witt homered in the ninth inning to make up for it).

Then over the weekend, Witt got himself picked off while attempting a steal. As Shaun Newkirk noted on Twitter, it was his fourth such occurence this year—most in the American League and second-most in MLB.

So what do the stats say? I took a look at Witt and some of his base stealing peers. This is not a comprehensive list by any means, but when thinking about fast young players and/or base stealing wizards, these are a few names that spring to mind. Before the table, here’s a rundown of all these stat acronyms:

• PA: Plate Appearances.
• SBO: Stolen Base Opportunities. Counts the times a runner was on first or second base with the next base open.
• SB: Stolen Bases.
• CS: Caught Stealing.
• SBA: Stolen Base Attempts.
• SBA%: Stolen Base Attempts Percentage. The percent of time a player attempted to steal a base against the total amount of stolen base opportunities.
• SB%: Stolen Base Success Percentage.
• OOB: Outs on Basebaths. Getting thrown out at third base from an outfield throw, for instance.
• XBT%: Extra Bases Taken Percentage. Percent of times the runner advanced an extra base on a single or double.

And now, the table:

There are a few things that jump out here for me. First, that Witt’s stolen base success rate of 71% is...bad. Considering the league’s success rate is 78% on stolen bases and how fast Witt is, there’s no reason Witt shouldn’t be at 80% or higher. Second, that Witt’s problem isn’t aggressiveness. No batter has had more opportunities to attempt a steal than Witt has this season (owing mainly to Kansas City having the worst leadoff hitter OBP in baseball). And so Witt is only attempting a steal about a fifth of the time. This is right about in line with Whit Merrifield—still an impeccable stolen base artist in his age-35 season—as well as Pete Crow-Armstrong.

So, what does this mean? It means that aggressiveness isn’t really the problem here. Hell, Elly De La Cruz is attempting a steal 57% of the time a base is available for him to steal, and he’s getting it done at an 86% success rate. It means that Witt’s speed isn’t a problem, as Merrifield is running a 91% success rate with a much lower sprint speed.

Ironically, Witt probably could stand to be either more selective or way less selective. The former would help him steal at a better success rate, but the latter would maybe help him brute force his way to learning how to be a successful base stealing artist.

The good news here is that the other statistics show that Witt is a great overall baserunner. Witt takes the extra base more than anyone else in baseball save Jose Ramirez, and despite being on the basepaths so often, he’s right in line with making outs on said basepaths. And, obviously, the other good news is that Witt is one of the five or so best players in baseball. If this is Witt’s worst problem, well, we’ll take it.