Shohei Ohtani’s stolen-base surge: How baseball’s best player added another elite skill to his arsenal

With just over a week remaining in Major League Baseball’s regular season, it’s safe to declare Shohei Ohtani’s first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers a massive success. He’s positioned himself to win his third career Most Valuable Player Award; he’s made progress toward returning to the mound next spring; oh, and he’s established a new historic benchmark by becoming the first player in recorded history to tally at least 45 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season (he recorded his 50th and 51st steal on Thursday afternoon against the Marlins). A 50-50 effort is now just two home runs away.

Ohtani, 30, had previously dazzled with his bat and his arm. This season, though, baseball’s preeminent multi-hyphenate has added another descriptor to his collection: basestealing extraordinaire. While it’s not common for any star to become a master thief after their 30th birthday — players tend to decline in that area by this time in their careers, and, anecdotally, teams tend to throw up the red light on their best players to preserve their health — there’s not much that is common about Ohtani’s career.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, no stranger to the art of the stolen base, credited Ohtani’s newfound ability to the quiet behind-the-scenes work he’s put in with coach Clayton McCullough on his technique and approach. “I just think now he is looking like a base stealer,” Roberts told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune last month. “The jumps are way better, the situations he runs just makes more sense to the scoreboard and he’s became a really plus base stealer and not just a fast baseball player.”

The results indicate Ohtani’s hard work is paying off. Not only has he been more aggressive on the basepaths, he’s been far more efficient, too. He entered Monday with would-be career-best marks in various categories, including total stolen bases, efficiency, and attempt rate per opportunity. (Do note that stolen-base opportunities are defined as times he was on first or second with the next base open.)

That would be impressive from anyone, let alone an elite hitter who has already added to their physical toll by continuing to rehab their arm. So, with Ohtani nearing yet another historic achievement, we felt this would be the opportune time for a deeper dive on his basestealing exploits. Let’s get to it.

1. How fast is Ohtani anyway?

Again, Ohtani’s otherworldly hitting and pitching performances over the years have made it easy to overlook his sheer athleticism. At his peak, it was fair to describe him as one of the faster runners in the league: he ranked in the 90th percentile or above in sprint speed as recently as 2021, according to Statcast. Ohtani has lost a step since, as players are wont to as they age, but continues to rank in the 73rd percentile.

Ohtani grades well according to more traditional measures of speed, too.

For those unaware, scouts have used stopwatches to clock the length of players’ journeys from the plate to first base as a way of contextualizing their explosiveness and pure speed. Left-handed hitters, like Ohtani, have an advantage because they’re naturally closer to first base. Still, his 4.16 home-to-first average is tied for the 17th best among qualified MLB players — that’s faster, even, than Elly De La Cruz.

To answer the question in the header: Ohtani continues to be quite fast.

2. Is Ohtani picking his spots well?

There are a few ways to analyze a player’s stolen-base ability. The most basic way is to look at their results; the most sophisticated way is to break down their technique. We could sit here and analyze Ohtani’s leads and jumps, but we think that the most effective way of showcasing his newfound chops is to take a hybrid approach.

Anyone reading this has watched enough baseball in their lifetimes to know that there are levels to a stolen base. A success is a success, but you can intuit that a success is a really big success when that attempt doesn’t result in a throw or a tag attempt. With that in mind, we went through and watched every Ohtani stolen base and logged how often the play ended with either no-throw (the ultimate success) or no-tag.

Basically, this is our rough way of assessing how well Ohtani is picking his spots — meaning if he’s running on the right pitches, or the right pitchers, at the right times.

Here’s what we found, in a bullet point format:

• Stolen bases: 51
• Stolen bases without a tag attempt: 14
• Stolen bases without a throw attempt: 17

To be clear: we counted a steal as a “no-throw” or “no-tag” if the ball was in the dirt and the catcher had to give up on the play; or if the ball slipped out of the catcher’s hand; or if the catcher made an errant throw that didn’t give the infielder a chance. If you disagree with that methodology, that’s fair enough; our thinking was that those kinds of mistakes are often a function of a runner who knows what they’re doing: either by picking their spots or by getting a good lead or jump and creating havoc.

Whatever your philosophy, let’s not get lost in the weeds here. Without a statistical baseline, we can’t say for sure how good Ohtani is at picking his spots. But once more, we’ve all watched enough baseball to know that a baserunner going without a throw and/or tag attempt on 31 of his 51 steals seems like pretty solid work.

3. How much has Ohtani benefitted from new rules?

It should be noted that stealing bases in 2024 is different than it was in 2018. Lest anyone forget, MLB installed new engagement rules prior to the 2023 season, limiting pitchers to a pair of no-risk step-offs or throw-overs during any given at-bat; they can throw over a third time, but they have to pick the runner off or else sacrifice the base.

MLB’s hope was that those changes would rekindle the running game. They have: clubs are averaging more than 0.72 stolen bases per team game since the start of the 2023 season. This year’s steals mark is the highest it’s been since 1992.

Assessing how much any given player has benefitted from the new rules is tough for obvious reasons — we can’t say for sure what would’ve happened under the old guidelines. Even so, we wanted to provide some information on this front. 

As such, we went through all 73 pickoffs attempts made against Ohtani this season and kept track of a few pieces of information along the way: how often he was caught leaning; how often he drew multiple throws; and how often he stole a base after the pitcher had exhausted their freebie disengagements. 

Here’s that data provided in a handy-dandy table:

There’s no denying that the new rules have shaped how pitchers approach base-stealing situations. We’re certain Ohtani has benefitted from that effect. We’re far less certain that said effect has helped Ohtani more than any other player.

There’s simply no evidence that Ohtani’s stolen-base total is being inflated relative to the average player by the rules and the rules alone; he’s not drawing a pair of throws then preying on a helpless pitcher all that often. 

4. What does it take to catch Ohtani stealing?

Forgive us in advance for sounding like harebrained business consultants pitching a new red-team, blue-team management exercise, but sometimes the best way to examine a situation is to look at the inverse. Or, when it comes to evaluating ballplayers, to look at their failures and figure out what they share in common. 

Truthfully, there’s not much to be gleaned from Ohtani’s failures on the basepaths. That’s to be expected given the small sample size at hand.

Nevertheless, we noticed one thing from the four times Ohtani was truly “caught stealing” (the other instance was labeled only as a pickoff): on two of those three plays, the catchers’ throws took the recipient in front of the bag and toward the first-base line, positioning them to swipe at Ohtani as he was sliding by rather than tag him as he arrived.  

Is there a lesson to be learned there? Only that nowadays, when it comes to Ohtani’s stolen-base exploits, it’s better to be lucky than good.