Dr. Giganto

Well, for one thing, guys like Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines realized the value of a walk. A lot of the speed guys today dont work the count, and have low OBPs. Thus, they get on-base less often and have less opportunities to steal.

For instance, here are the MLB SB leaders, and their OBPs last year:

Reyes .354
Pierre .331
Hanley Ramirez .386
Crawford .355
Brian Roberts .377
Eric Byrnes .353
Chone Figgins .393 (a fluke beyond all flukes...never had an OBP above .352 before)
Jimmy Rollins .344
Corey Patterson .304
Shane Victorino .347

To put that into perspective, Rickey Henderson's career OBP was .401, and its even higher if you take away the years he played past age 40. Tim Raines's career OBP was .385...only Hanley Ramirez ( a legitimately good hitter) and Chone Figgins (not a legitimately good hitter) were higher last year.

Secondly, I think a lot of it has to with teams simply having a better understanding of the importance of certain aspects of the game, like baserunning. The harm to the offense of getting thrown out stealing is much greater than the benefit of stealing that base. 3 times greater, in fact. Thus, if you dont steal at a 75% clip, you're actually harming the team. Henderson, Raines, and Vince Coleman all stole at over an 80% success rate, so it made sense for them to run. Here are the SB%s for the names listed above:

Reyes: 78.8%
Pierre: 81.0%
Ramirez: 78.4%
Crawford: 83.3%
Roberts: 87.7%
Byrnes: 87.7%
Rollins 77.4%

These guys are all above the 75% threshold...they steal bases because they are the ones who CAN steal bases. As you go down the list, and you get to guys with like 10-25 SBs, you find more and more guys that are below 75%. I mean, if a guy like Gary Sheffield is going to get thrown out 40% of the time, you're better off never sending him than forcing him to steal 20 times a year just to "make things happen".

Plus,once you get past the speed demons, the guys behind them have less incentive to steal, because the hitters behind them are better. Think of it like this:

Bobby Abreu is a decent base-stealer...he's stolen as many as 40 bases in a season, and has 296 career SBs at a 76% success rate. He steals steals a decent amount (25 last year) but less than before. After he bats, the next few batters are Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Hideki Matsui. If Abreu steals second and A-Rod hits a home run, it's exactly the same as if Abreu had stayed on first. Abreu probably scores from first on a double or triple, so stealing makes little difference if A-Rod hits a double or triple. If A-Rod walks, there's no difference at all if Abreu had stolen or not. In fact, A-Rod is probably more likely to walk if Abreu steals. Only if A-Rod hits a single, or a hard groundball (which is converted into a double play) does Abreu's position on first base make him worse off. A-Rod only did those two things (single and GIDP) in 16% of his PAs last season, and of course, he probably would have had at least one or two more GIDPs if Abreu never stole in front of him, but over the course of 708 PAs, the effect is minimal.

So, what if A-Rod hits a single? Instead of scoring from second, Abreu goes to either second or third. That's bad, right? Yeah, but the next batter is Jorge Posada, who has a pretty good chance of knocking Abreu in from second or third. And if Posada, makes an out, there's a good chance Matsui will knock abreu in.

Stealing bases is a high-risk, low reward maneuver, especially in this era of high-powered offenses. Players are going to get knocked in with extra-base hits anyway, so why take the risk of getting thrown out?