Team Games With Lots Of Steals But Not Much Offense

Yesterday

, the Marlins made a weird sort of baseball history. They stole 7 bases (all in 5 innings against Tommy Hanson –more on that in my Talking Chop post ) yet somehow managed to score only 1 run. They also drew 8 walks (7 vs. Hanson), yet they were blown out by the Braves, 7-1.

The Marlins’ offensive performance set a couple records. First, they are the only team in the boxscore era (since 1918) to score fewer than 2 runs while stealing that many bases. Eight teams had scored 2 runs with 7+ steals before, but the Marlins are the first to score just 1. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the last team to score 2 runs with 7+ steals was also the Marlins, who actually stole 10 bases in a game in 2000, yet still lost 6-2. Here are the lowest-scoring games by teams with 7+ steals:

My favorites are the ’77 Padres, who had 13 hits, 8 walks, and 8 steals; and the ’76 A’s, who had 10 hits (including a homer), 6 walks, and 7 steals. Yet both managed just 2 runs, in part because those games went into extra innings (the Padres lost in 15; the A’s won in 11). At least the Marlins yesterday had the excuse that they only had 3 hits–it’s hard to score runs without hits, no matter how many bases you steal.

Another way of looking at this record is to say that the Marlins stole more bases than any other team that scored 1 or 0 runs in a game. Five teams previously had stolen 6 bases with just 1 run scored, most recently the abysmal 2002 Royals:

The record, by the way, for most steals while being shut out is 5. It’s been done 9 times, most recently by the 1998 Orioles in this game

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The Marlins also tied the record for the most steals with 3 or fewer hits in a game, a record set over 75 years ago:

Those 1936 Philadelphia A’s still have an edge over the Marlins, however, since they managed 7 steals on just 2 hits, 1 fewer than Miami had. The A’s set another record in that game, one that no one has yet broken: most strikeouts (17) in a game with 7+ steals. The Marlins challenged that record, but fell a few short, with “only” 14 Ks:

All 3 of the Marlins’ hits yesterday were doubles, so they managed all those stolen bases without a single single! Given that singles are the most common precursor to stolen bases, that’s seriously impressive. In fact, they set the record for the most steals without a single. Only twice before had a team managed more than 3 steals without a single, yet the Marlins had 7:

To go along with their 7 steals, the Marlins also drew 8 walks. Only 6 other teams have matched both those figures and still lost:

Three of those losses, however, were in extra innings (the ’77 Padres, ’76 A’s, and ’69 Royals), so the Marlins are just the 4th team to have 7+ steals and 8+ walks and lose in 9 innings.

All of this is symptomatic of the Marlins’ season as a whole, in which they have 102 steals, 14 more than any other MLB team, but have scored just 3.71 runs per game, which ranks 28th out of 30 teams. The 2012 Marlins were built around speed, and they have done a great job in that area, but they’ve failed miserably in just about every other area. Which just goes to show that a few big-name free agent signings and a gaudy new stadium can’t cure all the ills of a team that lost 90 games the year before.