The daring Pujols steals third with two outs — again
In the third inning of Monday’s game, Albert Pujols stole third base with two outs. Pujols has always been an aggressive, if not always wise, baserunner, so Monday’s gambit wasn’t the first time he has gone against the grain and attempted an extra base despite the odds, nor will it be the last. So what do his career baserunning stats look like? Have his base-stealing exploits been on the whole helpful or harmful?
First, Pujols is running these last three years as much as he ever has, with 2009 and 2010 being his highest rate of attempting. But he is also succeeding: The more successful he is, the more he tries to steal, which is of course logical. And this has been the case his entire career, the exception being 2003, when he had an 83% success rate but attempted to steal relatively seldom.
But what about his attempts at stealing third base?
After not attempting more than three in any single season, Pujols went nuts in 2010, attempting to steal third seven times. To his credit, he swipes third with about the same rate of success (68%) as he steals overall (70%), though that’s not saying much (he’s essentially breaking even). Other than the excitement attendant with stealing third in the first place — and we have to admit, it’s pretty exciting — the titillating — or, depending on your bent, alarming — aspect of Pujols gunning for third Monday afternoon was that he did it with two outs. Anyone who has grown up listening to coaches or commentators knows that it’s generally frowned upon to risk being thrown out as the first or third out at third base. Of the 25 attempts at stealing third, here’s how they break down by the number of outs when Pujols ran:
So about a third of Pujols’s attempts have come with none or two outs. In our next post, we’ll look at the context of each of those attempts to see whether they were actually worth the effort — or whether they were simply Albert Being Albert on the bases.