Welcome to the second season of the steals report! I will be here every Wednesday during the season to go over important stolen base trends so you can find more speed for your fantasy teams.

Stealing a base is as much about the opposing pitcher and catcher as it is the actual base runner themself. So, being able to spot which teams and pitchers specifically are being run on most frequently will help you to figure out who can swipe some bags over the next week.

Before we get to this week’s important trends, here is the stolen base leaderboard over the past seven days.

MLB Notebook: ABS system an early success; Chase DeLauter, other rookies off to hot starts

Eric Samulski breaks down the recent news and top performers from across Major League Baseball.

• Eric Samulski,

Is that Mike Trout? It’s been a week’s worth of him turning back the clock and watching him be active on the base paths makes me feel nostalgic for 2012.

Nasim Nuñez was a popular deep league target during draft season and he’s delivering on a promise of playing time and speed so far. David Hamilton and Jake McCarthy should be on deep league radars as well for the same reasons.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. only needs 48 more stolen bases and 50 home runs to make good on his hope for a 50-50 season.

Next week, I’ll have the full season stolen base leaderboard here. We just need the season to be more than a week old before that's necessary.

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

It looks like Juan Soto may not push for 40 stolen bases again this season.

A theme last year, Shohei Ohtani will likely never run like he did in 2024 now that he’s pitching regularly again.

Oneil Cruz and Elly De La Cruz are scaring their managers by not attempting a stolen base over the first week.

Even though he was caught once, it’s encouraging to see Ronald Acuña Jr. be aggressive early.

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

Fantasy Baseball Stolen Base Targets

The White Sox (9 SB allowed), Marlins (8 SB), and Rays (8 SB) were especially susceptible to stolen bases over the last week. Let’s figure out why.

Starting with the White Sox, they allowed seven of their nine total steals in one game last Saturday against the Brewers. All came with Reese McGuire behind the plate, who only threw out eight of 31 would-be base stealers last season and doesn’t have a particularly strong arm or quick pop time.

Yet, a catcher being average or slightly below it defensively shouldn’t lead to that many stolen bases, at least not over nine innings.

Three of the seven from this game came during the six batters that left-handed reliever Bryan Hudson faced. And he started the inning fresh, so there were only five opportunities to steal a base and they did so three times. Hudson balked a runner to second too!

Three others came with starting pitcher Sean Burke on the bump. That makes more sense since he pitched four innings.

Going back to last season, neither Hudson nor Burke were particularly slow to the plate. Hudson was a bit slower though and there’s a good chance the Brewers, who are often one of the most aggressive base stealing teams in the league, saw something with these pitchers they could take advantage of.

If you were here last season, you might remember that no team was run on nearly as much as the Marlins and no catcher was worse at throwing runners out than Agustín Ramírez.

Miami allowed 191 stolen bases last season and caught just 24 runners. That came out to an 88.8% success rate by their opponents. The next closest team to each were the Astros, who allowed 157 stolen bases and caught 30, good for an 83.9% success rate by their opponents.

Again, Ramírez was a big reason why. He was the only catcher to start at least 25 games and catcher fewer than 10% of base stealers. Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez are also notoriously slow to the plate and poor at holding runners on.

Four of the seven bases stolen against the Marlins last week came in the three games in which Ramírez was behind the plate. Two others in the one game Pérez pitched. It seems as if last season’s trends continue this season unless proved otherwise. The Yankees and Reds are matched up against the Marlins over the next week. Pérez is pitching on Friday and Alcantara on Monday.

Lastly we have the Rays, who were also heavily featured in this piece last season.

Hunter Feduccia is back with them as a part-time catcher and is dreadful against base stealers. Nick Fortes is the other member of their tandem. He’s a quality defender, but more so as a receiver and framer than with throwing out base runners.

Joe Boyle is also poor at holding runners on and two bases were stolen in his lone start last week.

There were no other discernible trends with their pitchers though, so check back next week to see if anything else develops with Tampa Bay as a team to target when searching for stolen bases.

With Opening Day here, here's the final update to the preseason Top 300. I will be continuing on with a weekly updated in-season Top 300 on Mondays. Players are ranked for 5x5 mixed leagues using a one-catcher format. I include the mixed-league disclaimer because I do reward upside, particularly past the top 200 or so.

⚾️ Coming soon: MLB returns to NBC and Peacock in 2026! In addition to becoming the exclusive home of Sunday Night Baseball, NBC Sports will broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, “Opening Day” and Labor Day primetime games, the first round of the MLB Draft, the entire Wild Card round of the postseason, and much more.

2026 Fantasy Baseball Top 300 overall ranks

**Updated March 26**

March 26 Notes

Falling off: Kirby Yates (242nd), Reynaldo López (267th), Brooks Baldwin (270th), Spencer Steer (276th), Aaron Ashby (288th), Dylan Beavers (289th), Ryan O'Hearn (296th)

March 20 Notes

- The unfortunate Dylan Crews update.

I was, of course, very high on Crews for fantasy purposes this year, not so much because I expected him to emerge as a star (at .747, he had the second lowest projected OPS of my top 60 position players ahead of only Pete Crow Armstrong), but because I thought he'd make a run at 40 steals on a bad Nationals team. I probably should have factored into my expectations that said bad Nationals team can retain him for an extra year by keeping him in the minors for seven weeks or so. And after his demotion on Friday, it sure looks like that's what they'll do.

Crews was in the midst of a poor spring. I didn't care about that, and I don't think the Nationals really did, either. After all, the prospect likely replacing him on the roster, Christian Franklin, is hitting .241/.267/.241 with a 10/1 K/BB in 30 plate appearances. I still expect that Crews will come back and be pretty useful in mixed leagues starting in June, but even if he goes on a tear right away and the Nationals offense is as poor as seems likely, he's probably not returning until those seven weeks are up. He comes in at No. 199 for now.

- That's the day's only change to the top 300. The Twins' decision to release Liam Hendriks got Cole Sands moved up some in my projections, but not enough to crack the list. It's kind of hard to imagine a bullpen with less upside than the one Minnesota is going to running out there. Like, it's not going to be as bad as Washington's, but at least the Nationals have a couple of guys who are interesting. My favorite Twins reliever is probably Cody Laweryson, who the team DFA'd over the winter and who later wound up getting released by the Angels before making his way back to Minnesota. And he still might not make the club.

March 19 Notes

Falling off: Lars Nootbaar (285th), Zebby Matthews (295th)

- We're short on major changes this week, which is great, because major changes are usually the result of injuries. I did drop Joe Musgrove once again, though it still looks like he might return from his Tommy John setback before the end of April. Trey Yesavage fell from 50th to 62nd among starters after the Jays finally came clean about the reason they were slowplaying him this spring. Still, the shoulder impingement doesn't sound like a disaster; he was able to pitch in a minor league game earlier this week.

- Moving up on the pitching side of things was Nathan Eovaldi, who has looked strong after missing the final five weeks of last season with a shoulder injury. I've also moved Zac Gallen back into the top 300 after dropping him following his late re-signing with the Diamondbacks. Gallen has averaged 94.7 mph with his fastball in his three spring starts. He averaged 93.5 mph last year, and his career-high there is 94.1 mph from 2022. There's no guarantee the boost will stick around, but if it does, one imagines he'll bounce back in the strikeout department; he finished with a 21.5% K rate last year after never coming in below 25% previously.

- On the offensive side, I couldn't help but give Daulton Varsho another boost. I put little stock in spring numbers for veteran bats, but five homers and two strikeouts in 47 plate appearances is absurd. Chandler Simpson (up 12 spots to No. 211) and Kevin McGonigle (up 18 spots to No. 224) also climbed while getting projected for a little more playing time.

- In case you missed it, I posted an article with all of my favorite players for 2026 on Sunday.

March 13 Notes

- Falling off: Sean Manaea (277th), Brandon Pfaadt (295th), Ryne Nelson (298th)

- Sorry, no notes right now. Working on my annual "undervalued players" column. Expect another update here early in the week.

March 9 Notes

- Falling off: Jurickson Profar (239th), Jordan Walker (299th), Dominic Canzone (300th)

- Aside from Profar's 162-game PED ban, it was a pretty quiet week. Profar's exit from the heart of Atlanta's lineup moved up a couple of the players who were due to hit behind him. Mike Yastrzemski still didn't crack the list, though; he's a nice player, but not one with a lot of fantasy potential.

- Hunter Greene's elbow problem has dropped him some while waiting for the official word about the source of his stiffness. He said his UCL is just fine, and if that's the case, he hopefully won't be looking at any sort of lengthy absence. He's tumbled from 49th to 74th for now.

- Pitching for his country did nothing for Carlos Estévez's velocity woes Monday, as his fastball was still down five mph from last year's norm. Maybe he gets it back, but he was far from one of my favorite relievers in the first place. He drops to No. 210 for now, and Lucas Erceg joins the top 300 at No. 282.

- Kevin McGonigle is another debut this week, as Detroit's No. 1 prospect comes in at No. 260. As of this point, I still think he's a little bit of a long shot to make the team; he'd be a defensive downgrade at short, and the Tigers entered the spring pretty well set with their 13 position players. But he might well be one of the club's better hitters already. When it comes to fantasy potential, I'm not sure he's ready to hit more than 20 homers yet, and he probably wouldn't be a big factor in steals (he was 10-for-17 stealing base in 88 minor league games last year after going 22-for-24 in A ball in 2024). He'd be a mixed-league guy playing regularly, but I don't think he'd offer top-100 potential as a rookie.

March 2 Notes

- Falling off: Pablo López (205th), Zac Gallen (244th), Jake McCarthy (297th), Max Scherzer (299th), Jac Caglianone (300th)

- This was longer between updates than I wanted to go, but things will definitely be better this month. One big change this update is that relievers have been pushed up. There's just aren't as many good bets for saves as usual this year, and the third- and fourth-tier closers are going earlier as a result. So, Kenley Jansen, for instance, jumping from No. 174 to No. 146 isn't the result of a projections change. It's just more the price that needs to be paid to get a mid-range closer.

- Many of the position player changes are a result of new lineup projections. Jo Adell was hit particularly hard there; I had him as the Angels' likely cleanup hitter entering the spring, but it's starting to look like he'll hit sixth behind Yoán Moncada and Jorge Soler. I had already dropped the Reds' Noelvi Marte some because of doubts over whether he'd continue to bat second, but now it looks like he might hit as low as eighth initially. On the other hand, Matt McLain has moved up some, since he's the likeliest choice to replace Marte.

- That Kyle Tucker is likely to bat second for the Dodgers moved him up from 13th to 10th. Fernando Tatis Jr. lost a little ground with the Padres seemingly dropping him from the leadoff spot, but not quite enough to push him below Nick Kurtz in the rankings, since there was a significant gap there initially.

- Yordan Alvarez is down a few spots because the Astros' self-inflicted logjam will put him back into the outfield at least occasionally. I was really hoping for 150 games from him as a DH this year. It's now pretty clear that neither Christian Walker nor Isaac Paredes is getting traded prior to Opening Day, so Paredes is down to No. 171 and Walker fell about 30 spots to No. 261. Paredes would be about 40 spots higher if assured regular playing time, and he really ought to be, given that he's probably Houston's second-best hitter.

- Konnor Griffin's three early homers helped get him a 20-spot bump in the rankings to No. 193, but I'm still projecting him to open up in the minors. If the Pirates announced tomorrow that he'd be their starting shortstop, I'd have him around 110th or so. He'd probably be good for 30-40 steals, but his ability to hit for average would be in some question, and while he already has above average major league power, he'll be playing half of his games in a ballpark that's as tough for right-handers to homer in as any in the league.

- The Cardinals' JJ Wetherholt is looking increasingly likely to land a starting job at second base. I'm not quite sure that would make him an asset in shallow leagues, in part because the Cardinals just don't have a very good lineup. He might make a run at 15 homers and 15 steals, but the run and RBI numbers probably won't be there, especially if he's batting in the bottom half of the order early on. He checks in at No. 264 for now.