Ryan McMahon and the Kutina Club of Persistently Unsuccessful Basestealers

Today, we're here to talk about Ryan McMahon, but before we do that, we need to talk about Joe Kutina. Joe Kutina did not steal a base in 1912. The 6-foot-2, first baseman in his second season with St. Louis Browns, that wasn't his job. Kutina found his place in 1911, hitting .374 with a .589 slugging percentage for the Saginaw Krazy Kats of the Class-C Southern Michigan League. He joined St. Louis at the end of the season, putting up a 96 wRC+ with three home runs in 26 games with the Browns. In 1912, his wRC+ dropped to 59 and he hit one homer in 69 games. He was also caught stealing seven times.

I know getting caught stealing seven times sounds like a lot, but things were a little different back then. During the 1912 season, 73 players he was caught stealing at least seven times. Ty Cobb led the league with 34 failed steals, and three other players were also caught at least 30 times. The difference is that Cobb and the other three combined to steal 203 wins. Kutina, once again, stole zero bases. That made him the first player in AL/NL history to be caught stealing at least four times without successfully stealing a single base in a season — or at least recorded doing so in that spottier record-keeping era. According to Stathead, in the last 112 years, only 216 players have duplicated Kutina's dubious feat. Although that amounts to slightly less than two per season, the distribution is not exactly the same.

We're only in the third of the decade, but unless the pace picks up significantly, we'll finish with the lowest rate since the days when Joe Kutina was roaming the bases with reckless abandon. As it turns out, one of the changes made by the data revolution was not wanting to let players who can't steal a base keep trying and failing over and over again. That's why people don't like math.

So far this decade, Nicky Lopez is the only player to accomplish the feat, somehow getting caught five times without a stolen base in 2020. He'll go on to steal 22 bases in 23 attempts in 2021, so I might have to give up. another topic to look at is how you manage to fail so much, especially during a 60 game season. However, today our topic is about one player who has entered the Kutina area this season. Here is the current list of base stealers who have been caught at least twice, qualifying them to join the Kutina Club of Insistently Unsuccessful Basestealers. For entertainment purposes, I've also included their running speed and percentile rank. Interestingly, four of them are (or were) less than three. And there's our friend Ryan McMahon.

McMahon is not someone's idea to start a fire. Coming into this season, he had earned -3.1 career runs. However, he was 24-for-36 in stolen base attempts, a 66.7%-bad-but-not-disastrous rate, and has stolen at least five bases in the past three seasons. This year, his 19th-percentile sprint speed, while inaccurate, is the fastest since 2021. McMahon now has 102 games in which to steal a base and avoid joining Kutina on the graph above, but let's take a look at what has gone wrong so far. this season. His first caught stealing came on April 9 against the Diamondbacks.

At first, it's hard to blame McMahon too much here. Gabriel Moreno has a great arm, and since this is a double steal, McMahon needs to make sure Ezequiel Tovar is really going before he does. On the other hand, the first baseman doesn't even catch McMahon. He knows the steal is on, and he could have won more. In addition, his jump is really dangerous. He doesn't start moving until Merrill Kelly is well into his leg and Tovar is at full speed.

This outline still tells you everything you need to know. Kelly's left leg is on top. Tovar is already digging for third place with his head down. McMahon hasn't even made his crossover move yet. His first step to second wouldn't come until Tovar's fifth step to third. No wonder you got out by a mile. He didn't slow down significantly, but he probably didn't speed up because he didn't expect Moreno to join the front runner.

McMahon was caught a second time on April 28, and it's really hard to blame him for this one. First of all, he was called safe on the field.

McMahon clearly hit Victor Caratini's high throw, and it took a replay review to show that his foot was off second base by a centimeter or two. Joe Kutina has never dealt with this garbage.

Rather than showing replays during the review, ESPN cut to a hockey promo, so we never got to see what McMahon's lead or jump was like, but the situation makes a certain amount of sense. Framber Valdez is an average to below average catcher, and Caratini's arm has been good in 2023 (though he has been better so far this season). With two outs, McMahon waited until Valdez got two strikes against Elias Díaz with two straight balls, the second in the dirt. From 2020 to 2023, Valdez had a 50% strikeout rate once he had two strikeouts, above the league average of 42.6%. His .229 OBP in those situations was also the best in the league. Why not give yourself a chance, especially with another possible curveball? If McMahon was thrown out, Díaz would get another chance in the next inning.

McMahon's third episode of theft came four days later, and that's when things started to go wrong. He started in the first inning. Obviously, you're the 100%-miss-it-takes-nothing type, which is an admirable attitude, but less so if you miss 100% of the photos you took. do take it. Again, McMahon waited until there were two outs and two strikes on the batter, then went to second base. Unfortunately, he neglected to wait until the pitcher threw the pitch.

That doesn't mean he went willy-nilly. Edward Cabrera usually nods before he throws in the towel, and McMahon must have thought he was timing him. Cabrera pitched without a nod, one point earlier, so McMahon may have thought he was less likely to fire his second takedown in another knockout attempt. He took off when the brim of Cabrera's cap dipped, but this time, Cabrera didn't immediately follow that move with a pitch. In the absence of the crowd noise that Miami is famous for, the television microphones picked up half a dozen people shouting, “Get out!”

After the match, the weight of his transgressions finally seemed to hit McMahon. He removed his hat and placed his hand outstretched like Yorick's skull. Alas, what is McMahon.

Where are his gibes now? His tricks? His songs? His flash of joy that used to set the table roaring? He's 0 for 3 on stolen base attempts, and those days of cool are long gone. McMahon did not attempt to steal another base this season.

But he was ejected three days later, making him 0-for-4.

With one out in the top of the eighth and the tie at the plate, this was the most expensive of the four games. It reduced Colorado's chances of winning by 11%. “Hey guys,” moaned the broadcasters on the Pirates and Rockies broadcast. Replays showed that McMahon was simply fooled by what appeared to be a mid-range move. Content that the ball was going to home plate, he turned his attention away from there and started to lead the second time, then he almost fell to the ground when he realized his mistake.

As the inning progressed, the broadcast had time to follow McMahon on the long, lonely walk back to the dugout. He pulled his head down, looked up for a moment, then lowered his head again and looked at the dark place where he could be alone with his dark thoughts.

As I said earlier, there is a lot of season left, and McMahon can turn this thing around at any time with just one base steal. Just one more base, and Kutina Watch turns its withering eyes to Nick Senzel and Jeimer Candelario.

More importantly, McMahon is having a breakout year at the plate. Thanks to a big jump in both contact rate and contact quality, he's slashing .280/.369/.463, good for a 123 wRC+. Not only is that a career best, but it's also the first time he's been over 95.

His walk rate is high, his strikeout rate is low, and he is in the 95th percentile or better in average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity, and strikeout rate. Joe Kutina was demoted to the minors after his 0-for-7 season, and was out of baseball after just 53 more games.

On the other hand, McMahon is on pace for his first 4-win season while posting career bests in nearly every statistical category. His previous best was 2.9 WAR in 2022. He's been heavily considered in trades, but the Rockies have made it clear they have no interest in moving him, and that's probably for the best. He'll just have to stay put from now on.