The stolen base might be a dying strategy, but just because totals in that particular category were down 5% in 2020 compared to five seasons before it doesn't mean that speed is any less important a factor in today's game.
For us in fantasy, speed manifests in, most obviously, the stolen base. It's one of the five traditional rotisserie categories, and therefore we need to accurately project them in order for our teams to succeed. Speed -- and it's italicized in the lede for this reason -- has other influences, however, including its impact upon defense (quality defense improving a player's chance at additional playing time and, therefore, more chances to contribute to our teams), on runs scored (baserunning beyond the stolen base itself) and -- this one you might underrate -- on batting average.
As with any facet of today's game, there are even advanced metrics pertaining to a player's speed. Among those that I find more telling is Statcast's sprint speed, which measures a player's raw speed in, as they describe it, "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window." The league's average is typically 27 feet per second, with most players falling within a range of 23-30 feet per second. Statcast also tallies Bolts, which count the number of times a player exceeded a 30-feet-per-second sprint speed.
Sprint speed alone, however, isn't a driving force behind raw stolen base totals. A player's ability to read pitchers' motions, the jumps he gets, the pitcher-catcher matchups he chooses to exploit and, perhaps most importantly, the green lights that his manager gives him all enter into the equation.
For example, Anthony Rizzo has stolen 44 bases combined the past six seasons, despite sprint speed scores that both ranked among the league's bottom third in each and have shown year-over-year decline in each season. Adam Engel, meanwhile, has only four stolen bases, has been caught three times and picked off twice in the past two seasons, despite being one of only five players with 30-plus feet per second sprint speed in each.
Among other widely available metrics for a player's raw speed are FanGraphs' Ultimate Base Running (UBR), which measures a player's value via baserunning plays excluding stolen bases; Stolen Base Attempts per Opportunity (SBA/Opp), which calculates how often a player attempted a steal when presented with the opportunity (those calculated by Baseball-Reference.com); and Speed Score, invented by Bill James in 1987 and which combines a player's stolen bases, attempts, triples, runs scored, grounded into double plays and defense into a single metric.
Again, none of these represents a perfect metric for projecting stolen bases. Trent Grisham, who stole 10 bases in 2020 and has otherwise excellent speed metrics, was the majors' worst qualified performer in UBR (minus-2.7), perhaps due to his having committed three outs on the base paths while taking the extra base on a modest 42.3% of his chances. Conversely, Hunter Dozier had the majors' seventh-best Speed Score in 2020, but 61 players stole more than the four bases that he did.
My advice, when it comes to projecting stolen bases: Don't invest too much stock in any singular speed-driven metric, but rather consider the player's full statistical array, not to mention his manager's green-light tendencies (we'll get to that later). Should you need to make a snap judgment on a player utilizing only one number, however, my preference is sprint speed.
Now, about that batting average category
Speed also has a discernable effect on batting average, and in this age of big power, rising strikeouts and dropping batting averages -- the league's .245 mark in 2020 was 10 full points lower than it was just three years earlier -- the influence of speed on the category is another actionable thing in fantasy baseball.
BABIP, or Batting Average on Balls In Play, is commonly cited in fantasy analysis, and one of the reasons I've exclaimed for years that a player's style of hitting needs be weighted in said analysis is this influence of speed on that number. A faster player, naturally, is more likely to enjoy a greater BABIP, and breaking down that number into only the player's output on ground balls can help identify speedsters and draft-day bargain opportunities.
The league's BABIP on ground balls in 2020 was .234, and in the past 10 seasons it was .242, as players reach base safely just shy of one-quarter of the time they hit a ground ball. Typically, the game's fastest players can exceed a .300 BABIP on grounders, with roughly 15-18 of the league's batting title-eligibles reaching that threshold in an average season (2020 had more due the smaller overall seasonal sample), with Tim Anderson, Mookie Betts and Trevor Story routinely members of that group. Incidentally, Yoan Moncada was one of only five players to manage at least a .300 BABIP on ground balls in each of 2017-19 (also Engel, Tyler Flowers, Adalberto Mondesi and Story).
Mathematically speaking, 60 points of BABIP on 150 ground balls over the course of a season represents nine nits, and nine hits over 500 at-bats of a full season represents a swing of 18 points' worth of batting average. Don't therefore underestimate the impact of speed on this category, as it's not entirely rooted in stolen bases!
That's a lot of information to digest, with what's above mainly there to help those who wish to do their own research find the tools to do so. Now, let's give you a head start in mining values -- both overvalued and undervalued -- related to stolen bases, batting average or anything tied to speed.
Three up
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins: You'll read a lot this preseason about his unusual 2020 statistics, especially the paltry two stolen bases he had in three attempts in 39 games. Buxton had fewer opportunities (32, per Baseball-Reference.com), in large part because he had only 17 singles, two walks and one hit-by-pitch all year, but that still results in a meager 9.4% stolen base attempts per opportunity, which is unusually low for a player who had the game's fourth-fastest sprint speed (30.0 feet/second) and sixth-best Bolt rate (55.9% of his chances). Point to the sabermetrically minded manager (Rocco Baldelli) and his team-wide, major league-low 2.7% SBA/Opp rate if you wish, but Buxton was given the green light on a healthy 18.7% of his opportunities in Baldelli's first year in 2019, which hints at plenty of room for categorical rebound.
Myles Straw, Houston Astros: His 8.2 Speed Score thus far in the majors (2018-20) was sixth-best among players with at least as many as his 224 plate appearances in those three seasons, and he has ranked in at least the 91st percentile in sprint speed in each. That's what makes the news that Astros manager Dusty Baker might regard Straw his leadoff man in 2021 so interesting, as it'd provide another playing time/counting numbers boost to go along with his projection as the team's starting center fielder following George Springer's departure. Straw has a 10.7% walk rate in the majors thus far and had a 12.5% mark during his minor league career, which can help mitigate his weak contact quality. He might not be the most natural choice for an everyday job, but the opportunity could grant him a chance at a 30-plus-steal season.
Harrison Bader, St. Louis Cardinals: Here's a player for whom speed greatly enhances his defense, which therefore leads to more at-bats, and with it more chances at stolen bases and other counting numbers. Bader's swing-and-miss tendencies put significant strain on his batting average, but he also has a .310 career ground-ball BABIP, as well as by far the majors' highest infield-hit rate (15.4%) during his four big-league seasons (2017-20). His Cardinals, even under manager Mike Shildt, are one of the more conservative teams regarding the stolen base, but Bader's speed should keep him in the lineup more often than not, keep his batting average above panic territory and, if Shildt allows, give him a realistic chance at his first 20-steal season in 2021.
Other players of note: Tim Locastro, a probable fourth outfielder/pinch-runner for the Arizona Diamondbacks, is the two-time defending sprint speed champion (30.7 feet per second in 2020). Edward Olivares is one of six players who had at least 40 home runs and 70 stolen bases in the minors from 2017-19, and if he sticks with the Kansas City Royals, his 28.9 feet per second sprint speed makes him an attractive AL-only cheap speed source. Rockies outfielder Sam Hilliard might be my "Avisail Garcia of 2021," a player with raw-speed metrics much better than the public perception, as Hilliard has a 7.0 career Speed Score and was routinely a 25-steal performer in the minors.
Three down
Jonathan Villar, New York Mets: Many of his metrics tanked in 2020, most notably his sprint speed slipping to 27.1 feet per second, his lowest in any of Statcast's six years measuring it. That slowing was masked, in 2020 at least, by his attempting a stolen base on a whopping 35.6% of his opportunities, the second-largest rate among players with at least 20 opportunities behind only Adalberto Mondesi's 54.2%, and a sure sign that volume, above talent, was responsible for Villar's 16 steals. Now 30 and in more of a utilityman than promised everyday role with the Mets, Villar brings much greater danger of being over-drafted, especially by those who saw his No. 124 overall Player Rater finish of 2020 and think it repeatable.
J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies: The reason I rank him among my top 75 overall players isn't a hope that his 12-steal production of 2016 might return, but rather the underlying metrics of his past 2-3 seasons that say he's growing into his power, which should make up for any slight loss of his speed. The latter is happening, though: His 28.2 feet per second sprint speed in 2020 was a career low, though by any measure it was still excellent -- and position-leading -- for a catcher. To be clear, you don't draft Realmuto because you think he's going to contribute a hefty number of stolen bases; you did it because he can deliver you 6-10 of them. Consider it more of a "bonus" situation than driving force in the category.
Victor Robles, Washington Nationals: By applying the "Down" label, it's a reference to his 2020 performance rather than a 2021 expectation, but understand that Robles has much work to do to recapture the speed-driven excitement that surrounded him in seasons past. After he packed on 15 pounds of muscle during the coronavirus pandemic "pause" last summer, his sprint speed collapsed, going from 29.3 feet per second in 2019 to 28.0 in 2020, and his Speed Score and UBR took significant wrong turns as well. Fortunately, early reports on Robles are that he has shed a lot of weight during the offseason, giving hope of a significant rebound, but his 2020 metrics make it clear that he needs to be closely monitored during spring training. He simply doesn't offer enough punch with the bat to be draft-worthy without his former 30-steal potential.
Other players of note: Tommy Pham had a 28.2 feet per second six-year sprint speed low in 2020, has hovered around zero in UBR in back-to-back years, and keep in mind how important stolen bases are to his overall fantasy appeal. One area of Javier Baez's game that shouldn't be blamed on the lack of access to in-game video was his declining 2020 speed metrics, as his UBR was 0.0 and his sprint speed dropped to a career-worst 27.9 feet per second.
Managerial tendencies
Finally, be mindful of the managers behind players' green lights on the base paths. A player with even modest speed can produce a good stolen base total under the most aggressive manager, while the speediest performer can disappoint in the category if playing for a more conservative managerial strategist.
The Texas Rangers' Chris Woodward has been one of the game's most stolen base-oriented managers in his two seasons at the helm. The team had a major league-leading 9.2% attempt rate on opportunities in 2020, and that was in spite of its collective 21 Bolts (the league's average per team was 19.8), and it wasn't a one-year development, either, as the Rangers had a 7.8% rate in 2019. Woodward's risk-taking was a driving force behind Isiah Kiner-Falefa's eight stolen bases and Shin-Soo Choo's six, despite their modest raw-speed metrics. Besides Woodward, the Seattle Mariners' Scott Servais (third-ranked 8.4% attempt rate), Tampa Bay Rays' Kevin Cash (sixth-ranked 6.8% rate) and Cincinnati Reds' David Bell (ninth-ranked 5.4% rate) ranked among the more aggressive managers relative to the raw speed found on their rosters.
On the conservative side and among returning managers -- Rick Renteria had a 25th-ranked 3.3% attempt rate despite the 2020 Chicago White Sox leading the majors with 65 Bolts, but he has since been replaced by Tony La Russa -- the Arizona Diamondbacks' Torey Lovullo had a 21st-ranked 3.7% rate, despite several speedy individuals on the roster. Additionally, the aforementioned Shildt of the Cardinals (19th-ranked 3.9%), Baldelli of the Twins (last-ranked 2.7%) and Los Angeles Angels' Joe Maddon (27th-ranked 3.2%) landed on this side of the ledger.