Cleveland Indians: Michael Brantley Has Become a Great Base-Stealer

The Cleveland Indians finally have seen the stud we expected

When the Cleveland Indians acquired the young Michael Brantley eight years ago, he was a zippy contact hitter with nearly no power. Across his time with the Brewers’ minor league affiliates, Brantley stole a combined 87 bases in 111 attempts, a solid 78 percent of the time. Upon joining the Tribe, he improved this figure in Triple-A, swiping 46 bags while only being caught five times.

Certainly it was a surprise when he failed to live up to this promise in the major leagues. During his brief stint in the majors in 2009, he swiped four bags while failing the other four attempts. His typical elite speed score of six or higher fell to a meager 2.9, but much of this can be chalked up to a small sample size. Nevertheless, this showing inspired neither fans nor the front office.

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2010 was a different story. Brantley stole ten bases in 12 attempts, and advanced base running metrics valued him at similar levels to his minor league activities. It seemed as if 2009 was a fleeting anomaly and 2010 was the real deal, but the outfielder failed to take another step forward in 2011. While his speed and overall base running remained excellent, his stolen base skills regressed to nearly league-average. The following season was even worse, and Brantley’s base-stealing outcomes dropped to sorry lows.

By the time the calendar flipped to 2013, it looked like the ship had sailed on the promise of the lefty’s elite base stealing abilities. Sure he was fast, but where was the great base runner for whom we had longed? He had bounced back to be a quality stealer that year, but had he reached his ceiling?

Fortunately, Brantley’s breakout 2014 gave us a definitive answer to that question. The 27-year-old smashed 20 home runs on his way to finishing third in that year’s Most Valuable Player voting. Hidden in those impressive feats was the truly awesome base-stealing threat we had seen in the minor leagues. He stole 23 bags while only being caught once, and he went 15 for 16 this past season.

No one has successfully stolen bases at a rate better than Michael Brantley

Over the last two years, no one has posted a better stolen-base rate than Michael Brantley, with a minimum of 20 attempted steals. In fact, the next closest player, Jose Reyes, has a rate eight percentage points worse than Brantley’s 95% mark. Well-regarded speedster Billy Hamilton sits way back at 78.5%.

Here is a table with the top finishers.

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This is quite a feat, but one thing stands out from that table: Michael Brantley only stole 38 bases in that time. Although he missed some time last year, Brantley still played more games than Cain and Reyes. Perhaps Brantley only ran when he felt very confident that we would be safe, which would certainly explain his incredible rate of success. Instead of running all the time and banking on being safe à la Dee Gordon and Billy Hamilton, Brantley may have taken a more tactical approach to minimize the number of outs he cost the Indians.

Also equally plausible, the Indians’ coaching staff may have had a good sense of when to send their runners. As a team, the Indians owned the third best rate of success last year despite having an average team speed score. This combination of talented coaches and players probably contributed to Brantley’s impressive run.

But will this run continue into the future?

Steamer, a projection algorithm, only expects Brantley to swipe eight bases in 12 attempts in 2016. Part of this roots in a meager 91 game season, but even extending this out to 150 games yields just 13 steals. For such an occurrence, Brantley will have to regress to 2012 levels, something that appears quite unlikely. The lefty will play his age-29 season this year, and regression of that level appears quite unlikely. FanGraphs’ survey of Fans, with a sample of 15, predicts Brantley to swipe 10 bags in 11 tries across 108 games. This is much more optimistic, and would reflect a slight regression from Brantley’s 2015 levels.

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It may be unrealistic to expect the outfielder to continue his impressive streak of single-fail seasons, but it is equally as improbable that he collapses into a shell of his former glory. As such, the Fans’ projection appears to be more probable, albeit slightly optimistic.