The Most Bizarre Jose Altuve Stat

Jose Altuve has 18 steals in 19 attempts this season. No, that’s not the bizarre stat. That’s just an impressive stat. Jose Altuve is an excellent base-stealer! Among the 71 players with at least five steal attempts this year, Altuve’s success rate ranks third. Since he began receiving regular playing time in 2012, no one’s stolen more bases. He’s fast, he steals plenty of bases, and he steals them well. Which is what makes the bizarre stat so bizarre, and here it comes: despite being fast, stealing plenty of bases, and stealing those bases well, Jose Altuve has been a terribly costly base-runner.

It’s easy to assume that good base-stealers are also good base-runners. The best base-stealers, typically, are the fastest guys on the field, and the best base-runners, typically, are those same fastest guys on the field. But if you think about it, aside from simply being fast (which isn’t necessarily a requirement for proficiency in either skill), base-stealing and base-running really aren’t as similar as they might appear. Base-stealing is more about pattern recognition, acceleration, and timing. Base-running has more to do with risk/reward decision-making, fluidity, and instincts. A base-stealer runs in a straight line with a defined endpoint. A base-runner runs in angles. Speed and athleticism is all that really ties these skills together.

Altuve has the speed and athleticism. That’s for sure. But when it comes to his base-running company, he’s the only one:

Look at that list of names. Look at it! It’s literally a list of nine old dudes whom way too many baseball fans believe they could beat in a footrace, and then Jose Altuve, one of the best base-stealers in the world.

Another way to look at this:

Negative seven runs over the last two years! Seven! Altuve’s (non base-stealing) base-running since 2015 has cost the Astros more than half a win. In fact, the negative value Altuve’s accrued from his base-running woes has actually outweighed the value of all those steals — his total BsR since the start of last year is -4.0.

I just had to reach out to Mitchel Lichtman, UBR proprietor, to ensure I wasn’t seeing things. Lichtman provided me a spreadsheet with the full outputs of the UBR calculations the last two years and assured me that, yes, this is indeed accurate. Jose Altuve really has been one of the five most detrimental base-runners in baseball since the start of last year, even moreso than David Ortiz.

So what gives?

We can start with the publicly available data. Baseball-Reference has some individual base-running numbers in their batting-splits leaders. And those numbers show us that Altuve’s taken the extra base in just over 40% of his extra-base opportunities since the beginning of 2015. That’s not terrible — right around league-average — but it’s sub-par for someone with Altuve’s speed. Someone like Elvis Andrus, who’s consistently among the best base-runners in the game, has taken the extra base in close to 70% of his opportunities.

The bigger issue is seen both in the publicly available numbers and in our UBR spreadsheet. The bigger issue is the outs made on the basepaths. Altuve’s made 23 outs on the bases since the start of last year, five more than anyone else. He’s made nearly as many outs on the bases (23) as he’s taken extra bases (28). Compare that to Josh Donaldson, a plus base-runner who’s been on base roughly as many times as Altuve the last couple years. Donaldson’s made just four outs on the bases while taking 43 extra bags. That’s 15 extra bases and 19 fewer outs for Donaldson, a massive gap which helps give some context to how his base-running (+3.9 UBR) could be worth a full win more than Altuve’s (-6.6).

Our UBR spreadsheet demonstrates just how costly the outs into which Altuve’s ran have been:

Negative value of outs on the bases, 2015-16

1. Jose Altuve, -3.7
2. Erick Aybar, -2.2
3. Jonathan Villar, -1.6
4. Shawn O’Malley, -1.6
5. Bryce Harper, -1.6

You’ve got to add the second- and third-most costly figures in all of baseball just to reach Altuve’s. The difference between Altuve and second place is the same as the difference between second place and 39th place.

So how has this manifested itself? Is there a pattern to Altuve’s TOOTBLANs? Yeah, actually, there sort of is.

Of course, there’s still been the “what-can-you-do, he made a really good throw”:

And the “third base coach did me dirty”:

And the “literal statistical noise, in video form”:

But here’s where I think the pattern is. Remember that kid on your little league team who, every time he got a hit, only stopped running when he either (a) was tagged out or (b) scored? Altuve is kind of like the grown-up version of that kid. Of his 23 outs on the bases since last year, six came on balls in play that he hit.

He ran into one when Erick Aybar let this ground ball skip past him:

He ran into another two innings later when he incorrectly assumed Mike Trout wouldn’t hit the cut-off man (to be fair, this did at least buy enough time for another run to score):

Ian Desmond caught him trying to stretch a relatively routine single into a double:

Another instance of greed (and indecision) after a ball skips past a shortstop:

I don’t know what the hell this is:

It’s almost like when Altuve hits a ball, he’s just looking for something, anything to afford him an opportunity to squeeze an extra base out of it (which, for a player with his speed, isn’t the worst idea), and the moment something in the play goes awry, he just can’t help himself from turning on the aggression. Problem is, that instinctual risk/reward decision-making we talked about earlier has been broken.

Solely in terms of making outs on the bases, Erick Aybar has been the second-most costly base-runner over the last two years. But if you navigate to Aybar’s player page, you’ll see that his UBR, unlike Altuve’s, has actually been positive. How so? Well, because he’s made up for it with the value of taking extra bases on hits (+2.5 runs to Altuve’s -2.9) and tagging up on fly balls (+1.2 runs to Altuve’s -1.0). In other words, Aybar’s aggression has ran him into his fair share of outs, but his aggression has also paid off, and the value of those successes has outweighed the negatives. Altuve’s aggression has led to more outs than anyone, and it hasn’t resulted in enough successes.

It’s sort of hard to fathom. There’s probably some happenstance working against Altuve here; he was never this bad before 2015, though his base-running has never really been an asset. But maybe Altuve is just the bizarro-Ian Kinsler — a guy who’s remained one of the best base-runners in the game despite losing most of his base-stealing acumen years ago. For someone with Altuve’s speed, you want aggression. You want that single stretched into a double. For someone with Altuve’s history, though, maybe you just want him to pump the brakes.