Francisco Lindor stole 31 bases last season. Starling Marte 24 in only 86 games in 2023. With a nod to good health, it’s likely that Marte will steal more bases in 2024 than he did in 2023. Yet when it comes to team speed that’s pretty much where it ends for the Mets. No other Met stole more than 11 last season (the departed Tommy Pham did that in 79 games with the team).
This is another example of why the Mets as a team seem, so very slow. They’ve been that way for a long time. It’s not only about stolen bases. The Mets have had base stealers on the team in the past. Roger Cedeno in 1999, stole 66 bases which was the club record, until Jose Reyes shattered it in with 78 stolen bases in 2007. That year the Mets stole 200 bases as a team. It is the only season they totaled that many. The record for steals in a season by a team in the modern era (1901-) is the 1976 Oakland A’s with 341. Rickey Henderson was not on that team and did not join them until 1979.
Obviously, team speed is not only all about stolen bases. The ability to take an extra base or react quickly to an overthrown ball or dropped 3rd strike requires a combination of reaction time, running speed, and base running know-how. BaseballSavant.com has measurements of each team’s individual player sprint speed as well as time to first from home plate. It won’t be a surprise to Mets fans that in 2023 they were among the overall slowest sprint speed teams in MLB. Not only that but in a statistic noted as ‘Competitive Runs’, the MLB average on a ‘competitive’ play is 27/ft/sec and the competitive range is from 23/ft/sec (poor) to 30 ft/sec (elite). Total up the team’s competitive runs for all teams in 2023 and the Mets (26.9 ft./sec) finished second to last.
Daniel Vogelbach’s departure may help the overall average team speed in 2024 but let’s be honest. Pete Alonso runs hard if not in an ungainly manner, Brett Baty, Jeff McNeil, Mark Vientos, and Francisco Alvarez are…slow runners. The catcher Alvarez might be the fastest runner of that bunch. The additions of Harrison Bader and Trayce Thompson add some speed but that’s in part countered by the slowness afoot from D.J. Stewart, and Joey Wendle at 33 is far from his best year in SBs which was 16 in 2018.
Former Met fan favorite Wilmer Flores seemed to epitomize the Mets ponderous baserunning. Wilmer tried hard but seemed to get thrown out at home plate or on the bases more often than any player.
With the new rules instituted in 2023 regarding pitchers’ limitations on pickoff throws, stolen bases have become much more significant. Historically anything over 75% success rate in stealing bases is considered to be good. There’s expectation all around MLB that teams will steal even more often this coming season than they did last season. The 2023 season saw stolen base attempts rising 40% over 2022 (1.4 in 2023 vs. 1.0 per game in 2022). 2023 stolen base success rate was an all-time best 80.2 percent in 2023 vs. 75.4 percent in 2022. Players recorded 3503 stolen bases in 2023, the most since 1987 (3,585) and the second-most in the last 100 seasons.
The Mets have never been a team with a bunch of fast runners. Even in 1986 with Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson and Wally Backman all thought to be fast runners, those four combined to steal 97 of the team’s 118 stolen bases. Ironically, Keith Hernandez who only stole two bases that season, was thought to be one of the best baserunners in the National League. Mainly because Keith was smart and decisive in his running decisions. Keith was not a fast runner.
The late Tim McCarver used to say on-air that ‘speed slows down the game’. What he meant was that repeated throws to first base become tedious and boring as it slows the action to a crawl. The rule changes limiting pickoff throws have changed MLB teams’ approach to base-stealing. Last year the NL defending champion Diamondback consciously took advantage of both the new rules as well as their overall team speed. Both were principal reasons for their success.
The Mets should be a little faster overall as a team than they were in 2023 mainly due to the losses of Vogelbach and Mark Canha (another slow-running player) and the additions of Bader and Thompson. Antoan Richardson has joined new manager Carlos Mendoza’s coaching staff as a first-base and baserunning coach. It will be interesting to see how Mendoza manages the running game. Hopefully it will be more than Richardson telling his players to run faster.
