Is Elly De La Cruz Going For 100?
The 2024 season is going to be defined by a player going for a distinctly '80s accomplishment. Yessssss.
Thirty-eight times this year Elly De La Cruz has reached first base with second base empty.
First 10 times: Took off on 14 percent of pitches (including the pitches that were fouled off or put in play)
Next 10 times: Took off on 14 percent of pitches
Next 10 times: Took off on 38 percent of pitches
Most recent 8 times: Took off on 59 percent of pitches
On Monday, he reached first twice but couldn’t attempt any steals. One time there was a runner on second blocking him, and the other time he was thrown out trying to stretch his single to a double1. That goes down as a somewhat bad game for Elly De La Cruz, because it knocked his stolen base pace down to 99 for the year.
Since 1990, only two batters have stolen more bases that he has through 41 games: Kenny Lofton, in 1996, the year he finished with 78; and Vince Coleman, in 1991, a season in which he got injured. Coleman is a key figure here. He’s the last player to steal 100 bases, in 1987. He’s also the last player to steal 80, in 1988. I’d be surprised if a healthy De La Cruz doesn’t reach 80, because—based on the way he’s accelerating his attempts lately—it seems like he is actively, intentionally targeting it, and maybe even targeting 100, a mark reached by only four players in the modern era. And why wouldn’t he? Besides the fact that stolen bases are an easy way to get injured, that they take enormous physical effort and put a heavy toll on the body, and that they’re not worth all that much to a team’s chances of winning, especially when accounting for the cost of outs made on unsuccessful attempts, why wouldn’t he? He should.
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There was recently a New Yorker article about whether humans are as susceptible to misinformation as we all fret about. The piece, by Manvir Singh, suggests that we’re not. Short explanation: We differentiate between things we think—factual things, such as “chairs exist”—and things we believe, symbolic things. Research shows we’re rigorous about what we think, because we have to be to survive: “Factual beliefs are for modeling reality and behaving optimally within it. Because of their function in guiding action, they exhibit features like ‘involuntariness’ (you can’t decide to adopt them) and ‘evidential vulnerability’ (they respond to evidence).”
We’re not as rigorous about symbolic beliefs, but we’re not trying to be. Symbolic beliefs “largely serve social ends, not epistemic ones, so we can hold them even in the face of contradictory evidence.”
This obviously made me think about baseball, and stealing 100 bases, which is voluntary.
If we’re focused only on Modeling Reality And Behaving Optimally Within It, then stealing 100 bases would fall somewhere between an overrated goal and, potentially, a negative one. If De La Cruz injures his shoulder stealing third base down by four runs for a fourth-place team in August, we will consider that suboptimal. Measuring each decision as optimal or not helps explain why the stolen base lost prestige when baseball strategies moved, in the past quarter century, from gut & tradition to data & analytics. It’s not that stealing bases isn’t valuable. But it’s not the most important thing, and plenty of fast runners won’t even try, and that’s fine.
But symbolic beliefs are important, too. They’re a huge part of what makes us human, what gives our lives meaning and binds our relationships. If Elly De La Cruz steals 100 bases this year, you could argue it will be a mostly symbolic achievement, by the standards of win probability added or what have you. It will also be one of the most exciting and enjoyable ongoing storylines of the season, it will make him one of the game’s biggest stars, and he will achieve a kind of baseball immortality that is only accessible to him in this very short window of his career, when he’s still at his fastest and nobody has talked him into slowing down.
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Watching somebody steal 100 bases (or even 80 bases) with intention is a tremendously exciting pursuit. Mass stealing follows a simple equation—Opportunity times Aggression times Success—that sometimes distorts the viewer’s normal values. When De La Cruz gets a hit, you root for the outfielder to cut the ball off and hold him to a single (so he can steal second). When he takes off on a stolen base attempt and the batter starts to swing, you root for a whiff instead of a ball in play (so he can steal second). For that matter, you start rooting several batters before his spot in the lineup that none of his teammates will reach base and clog up second base (so he can steal second). Fortunately for De La Cruz this year, the Reds’ leadoff hitters have a .280 on-base percentage. He has batted with bases empty well above the league-average rate, no small factor in his 25 steals.
Sometimes, surprisingly, a runner being on first helps him. Last Wednesday, he batted four times and went 0-for-4. But one of those outs was a soft groundball to third base with a runner on first. The defense took the lead out at second base, and De La Cruz reached on the fielder’s choice. De La Cruz stole second base on the first pitch to the next batter, and then he stole third on the next pitch. You wonder whether future fielders, seeing that, might make a different choice.
Four plate appearances, 0-for-4, two steals. Back when Barry Bonds was chasing 70 homers, it was often said that he might only see one pitch to hit all game, and the incredible thing was that he wasn’t missing it. You could say that about Elly De La Cruz, lately. That’s how he’ll have to chase history. He can’t wait around. He can’t cautiously measure the pitcher’s pickoff move, as he did in the first half of April. Now he goes before his teammates can put a ball in play and spoil his opportunity, the one part of that stolen-base equation that he can’t really control.
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