Runners Who Make the Least of Their Legs, 2024 Redux

One of my favorite pieces I wrote last year was about players whose baserunning value was at odds with their footspeed: specifically, those who were squandering the God-given advantage of their legs. A year later, I have a new crop of baserunners to write about. We also have an updated version of our metric for calculating baserunning value (BsR) in 2024. So, I decided the topic was worth a fresh look.

I took a pretty subjective approach when I wrote about this last season. I went through the sprint speed leaderboard on Baseball Savant, compared it to our BsR leaderboard, and scanned for players who stood out. This time around, I decided I could be a little more scientific. I made a spreadsheet featuring every player who has taken at least 300 plate appearances and recorded at least 100 competitive runs this season – nice, round, arbitrary cut-off points to limit small sample size randomness. Then, I determined the percentile value for each player’s BsR, as well as the percentile value for two different measurements of speed: sprint speed and the time it takes to run from home plate to first base (HP to 1B).

As I compared the results, three names immediately caught my eye: Jo Adell, Jeff McNeil, and Mickey Moniak. Adell has, by far, the widest gap between his sprint speed percentile (86th) and BsR percentile (9th). That’s approximately a 77% difference; no other runner has a gap bigger than 60%. Meanwhile, McNeil boasts the widest gap between his HP to 1B percentile (86th) and BsR percentile (19th). Finally, Moniak ranks among the top 20% in both sprint speed and HP to 1B, yet he ranks among the bottom third in BsR. He has the third-largest gap between his sprint speed (84th) and BsR (32nd) and the fifth-largest gap between his HP to 1B (83rd) and BsR. He is the only player with one of the five largest gaps in both areas:

Adell’s 2024 campaign ended last Friday when he suffered an oblique strain. It was an up-and-down season for the former top prospect, to say the least, but his poor baserunning may have been the most disappointing aspect of his performance. The 25-year-old looked capable with the glove in right field and showed flashes of promise at the plate. Adding some value on the bases should have been the easiest way for a player with his natural speed to fluff up his overall numbers. Instead, he cost the Angels approximately three runs with a number of poor baserunning decisions.

For one thing, Adell was caught stealing 10 times in 25 attempts. That makes him the first player since Manuel Margot in 2018 to have 15 or fewer steals and at least 10 thwarted efforts. In one particularly clear example of Adell wasting his speed, here’s a clip of him easily stealing second base, only to overrun the bag and get caught on his way back:

In addition to his inefficient basestealing (his -1.8 wSB ranks 11th worst among all players), Adell was nearly as detrimental to his team on balls in play. On the play that Statcast identifies as his worst baserunning blunder of the season, he cost the Angels -0.82 runs. And he might have cost home plate umpire Mark Wegner even more than that:

Moreover, Adell also caused problems by not running. In fact, the numbers at Baseball Savant estimate that he cost the Angels more runs by staying put than by getting thrown out. His advancement attempt rate this season is 4% below average, and he cost the Angels -2 runs on holds. His most egregious mistakes in this department were a couple of instances in which he failed to turn some weakly hit balls into hustle doubles. In the first clip below, he doesn’t seem to notice the ball ricochet off second base and into the outfield, so he runs through first instead of rounding the bag.

In the second one, he simply doesn’t run fast enough out of the box on a pop fly to shallow center field:

To top it all off, I have one more example of Adell’s poor baserunning that isn’t even included in his -3.1 BsR; it will go down in the record books as just another groundout. On this play, Adell was hustling out the box, but he was so distracted by his quest for a double that he didn’t notice the ball beating him to first base. By taking the scenic route to the bag, he ended the inning and cost his team a run in a close ballgame:

Ben Clemens wrote about this play (and also made the GIF) for his Five Things column a few weeks ago, and I highly recommend you check that out. As Ben mentions, a lot of the blame for this particular play should go to first base coach Bo Porter. Indeed, the fact that two of the three players I mentioned at the top of this article play in Anaheim doesn’t reflect well on the Angels coaching staff. And the problem goes beyond just Adell and Moniak. Out of the 243 players I included in my research for this piece, the top three largest gaps between sprint speed and BsR percentiles all belonged to Halos players: Adell ranked first, Moniak third, and catcher Logan O’Hoppe slotted in between them. Adell, Moniak, and O’Hoppe were the only three players with a difference of at least 50% between their sprint speed and BsR percentiles.

As Ian Fleming famously wrote in Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” In this case, however, the enemy action might be coming from within. New manager Ron Washington brought a more aggressive baserunning approach to the Angels in 2024, but the results have been even worse than last season, when the Angels finished 28th with -11.6 BsR. This year’s team has the worst stolen base success rate in the majors (72.05%) and the second lowest BsR (-12.5). Out of the 10 different types of situations that go into calculating Statcast baserunning value (xBR), they have accrued positive value in only one. Still, poor coaching cannot absolve these individual players of all the blame.

There is a key difference between the two outfielders, though. Despite his excellent sprint speed, Adell’s HP to 1B time is slightly below average (44th percentile), while Moniak ranks in the 84th percentile for sprint speed and the 83rd percentile for HP to 1B. Perhaps some of this has to do with Moniak’s batting left-handed, which should give him an advantage over Adell out of the box. It could also partially explain why Moniak’s -1.2 BsR isn’t nearly as poor as Adell’s -3.1 mark. Either way, it is still puzzling that a runner as quick as Moniak has been a negative presence on the bases.

Part of the problem is that Moniak has stolen only seven bags. He is 7-for-10 in stolen base attempts with a -0.6 wSB. In his defense, his costliest “base-stealing” play was one in which he was technically caught stealing home, yet, more accurately, he tripped on his way back to third after a failed bunt attempt and got caught in a rundown:

I wouldn’t necessarily call that evidence of poor baserunning; we all trip sometimes. The real issue is that Moniak hasn’t successfully stolen enough bases to make up for that mistake. While he doesn’t reach base very often (.267 OBP), Baseball Reference estimates he has had 108 stolen base opportunities this year. For a runner with his speed, you’d expect more than seven steals — and more than 10 attempts.

Meanwhile, Moniak has been a little more aggressive on balls in play, with an advancement attempt rate of 4% above average. However, he has a negative xBR due in large part to a couple of outs at third base. This time around, I don’t have much to say in his defense. One of the outs wasn’t close at all, and he definitely should have held up at second:

On the other play, Moniak actually beat the throw, but he slid into third so poorly that he was called out after a replay review. I don’t like when calls are overturned because a high-definition camera caught the runner lifting off the base for a fraction of a second. In this case, however, Moniak popped off the bag for long enough that third baseman Brett Harris could reapply the tag after reaching his left arm in the air. The out call was more than justified:

Finally, we come to McNeil. Like Adell, the Mets second baseman is out for the rest of the regular season after suffering an injury last Friday. He fractured his wrist, and thus, he won’t have a chance to improve his disappointing -2.0 BsR.

McNeil has long been something of a baserunning enigma. Throughout his career, he has always had excellent HP to 1B times despite his middling sprint speed. The fact that he bats left-handed certainly helps, but there is clearly more going on here. These numbers are all the proof you need that maximum speed isn’t the only way to measure how fast a player can move:

By getting down the first base line so quickly, McNeil has maintained an above-average career BABIP (.312) and infield hit rate (8.2%), and he’s always done well at avoiding double plays. However, his ability to escape the batter’s box quickly has not translated into getting good jumps on the bases; he has never been much of a threat to steal or take the extra bag. He has accrued negative baserunning value in five of the past six seasons, largely due to his conservative approach. He swiped just five bags this year, and his advancement attempt rate is 7% below average.

According to Statcast, McNeil’s three costliest holds this season were all on plays in which he failed to score from second on a single to the outfield. After watching all three clips, it’s hard to blame McNeil for staying put. In each instance, taking off for home would have been a significant risk. That said, if he could run home as quickly as he runs to first, perhaps he would have scored on at least one of those plays.

Adell, Moniak, and McNeil were the runners who stood out to me most, but they’re hardly the only ones who have squandered their speed this season. From speedsters like Julio Rodríguez to slower-moving sluggers like Juan Soto, there are plenty more players who might surprise you when you look at their baserunning value compared to their speed. So, as a parting note, I’ll leave you with this table featuring another handful of runners who caught my attention for one reason or another, sorted by their BsR: