Stealing fantasy gains

IN THE fantasy baseball world, the focus has been so heavy on accruing at-bats and worrying about starting pitcher inningslimits, many people have forgotten some key strategies we were ready to employ this season.

Like, where is the outcry for stolen bases? Just because the season is shorter, doesn’t mean your need for speed can be overlooked.

Considering this season’s sprint toward an expanded playoff format, teams are trying to be more aggressive on the bases in an effort to steal wins. Heading into this weekend, teams had played an average of 11 games each, and we already had 162 stolen bases. If you prorate that number over the course of a 162-game season, you end up with 2,385 stolen bases, which puts us 105 steals ahead of last season.

The individual leaderboard will give you names like Tommy Pham, Luis Robert and Fernando Tatis, Jr. The three of them lead the league right now, but none of them had more than five stolen bases, and unless you have a heavy surplus of stats in another category, they could be extremely difficult to acquire. What you need to do is look at which teams are being the most aggressive on the bases.

Pham and Tatis have accounted for nine of the Padres’ MLB-leading 20 steals, which means we should be digging deeper for potential targets, like Trent Grisham and Jurickson Profar.

You can also look at Wil Myers, who is not only hitting for power and average, but has also totaled double-digit steal numbers in each of his last four seasons.

Beyond San Diego, Seattle and Texas have also been fairly aggressive on the bases. The Mariners are second in the majors in stolen bases as names like Shed Long, Dylan Moore and J.P. Crawford linger on your waiver wire. The Rangers rank third with Elvis Andrus, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa and Nick Solak regularly contributing.