This article is part of our Stathead Sagas series.

Stolen bases, like most good things in life, are acquired through some combination of ability and opportunity. Unfortunately for players – and the fantasy owners of those players – much of the opportunity side of the coin is out of the player's control. Perhaps the most famous example of this comes from Moneyball, in which speedster Ray Durham is told not to run by Billy Beane and the Athletics because of the prohibitively high value the Moneyball A's placed on not making outs.

It isn't necessarily a poor strategy – there is a threshold at which point basestealers are costing their teams more runs getting caught then they create by stealing the base, and if a team is getting caught too often, they're better off not running. However, this threshold changes and evolves with the game itself.

When seemingly every hitter is capable of getting on base or even hitting a home run, as was the case as the Athletics rose to power during the Steroids Era, throwing away that out is dangerous, and often not even worth the attempt. In the pitchers' era we seem to be entering – the league OPS has dropped from .759 to .720 since 2001 and teams now combine to score one fewer run per game – the relative benefit of stealing bases increases greatly.

Teams are most certainly taking note:

Stolen bases are on the rise, and it's not that the runners are beating the catchers more often.