Fantasy Baseball Steals Report: Agustín Ramírez is a defensive liability and José Ramírez is age-less

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Eric Samulski

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Here’s to hoping Zach Neto can rediscover some stolen base efficiency because being successful in three of five tries is how you wind up with a red light.

Sal Stewart is currently on pace for 54 home runs and 41 stolen bases.

It’s nice to see Konnor Griffin, one reaching base and two, being aggressive once he’s there.

Now, here is the overall stolen base leaderboard on the season.

José Ramírez is so special. The only players to steal at least 40 bases in their age-33 season or later since 2000 are Eric Young Sr. – the only to steal 50 – Ichiro Suzuki – who did it three times, the latest being his age-37 season – Rajai Davis, and Dave Roberts. Ramírez appears well on his way to joining this group.

José Caballero, Jakob Marsee, and Carson Benge are not hitting at all. So the stolen bases are especially welcome.

Next, here are some players that we’d hoped would be more aggressive or efficient on the base paths so far.

It’s been a disastrous start to the season for Pete Crow-Armstrong whose draft cost never made much sense.

Shohei Ohtani stole a base! Finally! By this date last year, he’d already swiped five bags.

Now, let’s go over the most important stolen base trends over the past week.

Fantasy Baseball Stolen Base Targets

Two teams allowed 10 stolen bases this week: the Marlins and Rays.

Starting with the oft-featured Marlins, Agustín Ramírez continues to show that he is a liability behind the plate.

Despite only catching two games of their last six games, five bases were stolen on his watch. The Marlins are also clearly trying to mitigate his deficiencies some because neither of those games were started by Sandy Alcantara or Eury Pérez, two of the easiest pitchers in the league to run on.

Possibly worse than the stolen bases at this point, his general defense back there is sloppy altogether. They lost a game a few weeks ago because of an ugly passed ball he let up in a ninth inning against the Reds. Then on Friday night, after the Marlins clawed back to tie the game against the Brewers, he just missed this ball at home plate in extras.

Xavier Edwards could not even hide his disappointment. To make it worse, earlier in this same game a two-out throwing error from Ramírez forced a run home. Receiving the ball, throwing it, and apparently now catching it have all given Ramírez fits and it’s costing his team games.

It’s gotten to a point where concern should be rising regarding his playing time or spot on the major league roster.

I mentioned he only caught two games over the past week, he also served as the designated hitter in three, so the Marlins are clearly still motivated to get him in the lineup despite these defensive woes and just a .637 OPS with two home runs and one stolen base himself so far. He’s been one of the biggest disappointments in fantasy baseball to this point while his counterpart, Liam Hicks, has been a stud.

The Marlins are heading on a west coast trip to take on the Giants and Dodgers this week. The Giants are by far the least aggressive and least efficient base stealing team in the league being successful on just five of nine attempts. Luis Arraez of all people leads them in steals. The Dodgers are more efficient, but also near the bottom of the league in raw attempts. Hyeseong Kim could be a readily available stolen base streamer.

Next, the Rays, who’ve narrowly avoided this column all year despite being toe-to-toe with the Marlins in stolen bases allowed.

Back-up catcher Hunter Feduccia seems to be a key culprit as to why. He flashes negatively in many key catcher defense metrics and six of the 10 bags stolen against them as a team last week happened in his two starts.

At the same time, there was no discernible trend among their pitchers. Shane McClanahan had two bases stolen on him and has allowed the second biggest jump to runners among all left-handed starting pitchers. Reliever Hunter Bigge also had two steals on his watch, but it’s hard to target a reliever to stream stolen bases. Also, all four of those came with Feduccia behind the plate.

They’re scheduled to play the Twins and Guardians this coming week. Both teams are middle of the pack in terms of speed. José Ramírez is doing all of the heavy lifting for Cleveland though, accounting for 11 of their 19 stolen bases as a team. Otherwise, Brayan Rocchio, Daniel Schneeman, and Angel Martínez are waiver options who could swipe a bag.

The Twins have a more even distribution. Depending on league type and size, Luke Keaschall, Kody Clemens, Austin Martin, James Outman, or Royce Lewis could find their way into a couple steals.