re: What happened to stolen bases in baseball? Was Rickey Henderson that good?

quote:

---

Possible evolution of the catcher as well. More athletic more accurate throwers

---

Caught stealing percentages used to be much higher. Roy Campanella is the all time leader at 57%. You need to go pretty far down the list to find any modern catchers. Certainly part of that is that practically anyone would attempt to steal back then.

The slide step went mainstream around 1990, just as steroid use was spreading everywhere. Then modern analytics started showing more definitive risk/reward analysis, and the proliferation of the PED aided HR tilted that ratio heavily toward cautious baserunning.

Stolen bases tried to make a bit of a comeback when PEDs were finally addressed, but new analytics have apparently proven that always trying to hit the ball as far as you can is the most efficient way to score runs.

Baseball needs bigger ballparks.