The Rays have jumped out to a great start this season, but the best jump may be that of first to second. The Rays currently lead all of baseball in stolen bases with 72. The next closest team in the American League is the Red Sox with 58. The Rays are currently the only team in baseball that is averaging over one stolen base per game. Although we have the most stolen bases, we have also been thrown out more than any other team in the AL with 25. Our SB% is sitting at 74% which is right on the league average. The team has racked up the attempts by trying to run against a team as much as possible when they have a weak arm behind the plate.

The team has made four stolen base attempts in a single game five times this year. The chart above shows these five games. As can be seen, in three of these five games the catchers CS% was well below the league average of 26%. The only game in which the team ran poorly was against the Cardinals and the strong-armed Yadier Molina. This was by far our worst game on the basepaths, as this was the difference between a win and a loss. Through these five games we stole a total of 14 bases. The Detroit Tigers currently have 21 stolen bases through 63 games.

Although the team has been running like mad men, they have for the most part been taking calculated risks. Also, our leadoff guy only has three stolen bases and in the future we could possibly be running even more.