I was noodling around on www.baseball-reference.com this morning--thank, God, for take-it-easy summer Fridays--and came to the conclusion that Ricky Henderson’s record of 1406 career stolen bases is one of those MLB records that will never be broken (like Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Cy Young's 511 wins, etc.). First, consider that the current stolen bases leader among active players is Dee Strange-Gordon with 336, who is at the end of his career--nearly all of the players behind him on the list are either too far along in their careers or simply don't have enough stolen bases to give Henderson's record a realistic shot. Second, unless the prevailing MLB philosophy on stolen bases was to turn drastically from ‘Moneyball’ towards something akin to how the game was played in the 1970s (which was better and more exciting), today's manager will simply never even consider giving an up-and-coming Ricky Henderson the green light to steal often enough to be able to sniff the record.
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March 2024
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