5 greatest baserunning threats in Boston Red Sox history

These former Red Sox players were a threat on the base paths

Our fascination with home runs tends to draw our attention to the power hitters but the speedsters can do plenty of damage by wrecking havoc on the base paths. The Boston Red Sox have a long history of outstanding offensive performers but speed is an element that often goes overlooked.

In fairness, the Red Sox don’t have a great track record for prioritizing speed. In 2021, Boston ranked dead-last in the American League and 29th in the majors with a meager 40 stolen bases. This franchise has typically been one that relies on the extra-base hits, with Fenway Park’s towering green wall in left field being an inviting target for doubles.

The single-season franchise record for stolen bases doesn’t crack the top-100 in major league history and the record for the most career steals in a Red Sox uniform falls outside the top-150.

Baserunning isn’t limited to stolen bases though. FanGraphs has a statistic called BsR, an all encompassing base running statistic that turns stolen bases, caught stealings, and other base running plays into runs above and below average. Taking an extra base to move from first to third on a base hit, avoiding outs on the base paths and not grounding into double plays are all a part of baserunning.

Through a combination of stolen bases, efficiency and BsR, let’s explore the best baserunners in Red Sox history.

Red Sox outfielder Tommy Harper

Tommy Harper only spent three seasons in Boston but he racked up enough steals to land in the top-10 in franchise history with 107.

Harper arrived in Boston in 1972 following a two-year stint in Milwaukee that saw him make his lone All-Star appearance. He previously spent one year in Seattle when he stole a career-high 73 bases. The journeyman was on the wrong side of 30 years old when he joined the Red Sox and nearing the end of his prime but he still had wheels, swiping 25+ bases in each of his three seasons in Boston.

In 1973, Harper stole 54 bases, which at the time set a new single-season franchise record.

Harper’s 9.5 BsR during his three seasons with the Red Sox ranks eighth in franchise history. That’s an impressive achievement considering his rather limited time with the club. Harper appeared in 409 games with the Red Sox. Only Coco Crisp (19.2 BsR in 368 games) accumulated a higher BsR in fewer games.

Harper swiped plenty of bases but wasn’t particularly efficient in doing so. Even in the year he led the league with 73 steals for Seattle, he also led the league in getting caught 18 times. His 76.4% stolen base percentage is the lowest among the five candidates on this list. A mediocre success rate and the fewest games played among these players is why Harper lands at No. 5.

Red Sox outfielder Tris Speaker

Tris Speaker began his career during the dead-ball era when home runs were a rarity and speed was a vital part of the game. Speaker spent the first nine seasons of his career in Boston and tallied 267 steals, the second-most in franchise history.

Speaker swiped at least 25 bags in every season he spent with the Red Sox, reaching at least 35 in five of his seven full seasons. The 52 bases he stole during his MVP campaign in 1912 set a single-season franchise record that stood for over 60 years until it was finally broken by Harper. On the list of the franchise’s best seasons for stolen bases, Speaker appears in three of the top-10 spots.

As was the case with Harper, Speaker wasn’t particularly efficient, converting 76.5% of his stolen base attempts. Caught stealing wasn’t an official statistic tracked by MLB when he played and his Baseball-Reference page shows several gaps from seasons with no data for that category. However, he was charged with being caught at least 25 times in three seasons with the Red Sox. His success rate might have been even worse than his career totals indicate based on the seasons we have data for. In 1915, Speaker stole 29 bases but was caught 25 times. That’s a horrible rate that would force his manager to give him the red light in the modern era.

Aside from stealing bases, Speaker was an above-average baserunner with a 3.7 BsR during his Red Sox career, which ranks 16th in franchise history.

With a lack of power to fuel offensive production, players in Speaker’s era had to take more risks on the base paths to generate runs. In the modern era, players can afford to be more patient while waiting for a teammate to hit one over the fence to drive them in. Speaker’s inefficiency was partially a product of the time period he played in and shouldn’t overshadow his impressive single-season performances or career total.

Red Sox outfielder Harry Hooper

Harry Hooper is another dead-ball era player who both benefited and dealt with the same drawbacks of the time period as Speaker did.

Hooper’s 300 stolen bases in a Red Sox uniform are the most in franchise history. He swiped those bases at a slightly more efficient rate than Speaker, if we are to believe the inconsistent data from that time period, but Hooper also had the benefit of playing in nearly 600 more games during his 12 seasons in Boston.

Despite stealing more total bases than any other Red Sox player, Hooper never had a season in which he topped the 40 steals he tallied in his first full season. His record is about longevity and his consistency with stealing over 20 bags in nine seasons.

His overall baserunning was deemed barely above-average by FanGraphs with a 0.1 BsR. However, it’s important to note that our measurements for baserunning are far more advanced than they were a century ago. The list of the 25 best single-season BsR ratings in franchise history almost exclusively belong to players in the 21st century, with the exception of Harper’s 5.7 BsR in 1973. Speaker is the only other Red Sox player to crack the top-30 prior to 2000.

BsR is a useful tool for evaluating overall baserunning but it’s clear that it’s less reliable for players from the early 1900s when there were fewer metrics to track.

Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury

Jacoby Ellsbury ranks third in franchise history with 241 steals despite appearing in far fewer games than anyone else in the top-five.

His blazing speed was immediately put on display when he led the league with 50 stolen bases during his first full season to finish third in the Rookie of the Year race. The following season he shattered the franchise single-season record with 70 stolen bases.

Ellsbury led the league in steals three times, swiping 50+ bags in each of those seasons. His 52 steals in 2013 and 50 in 2008 rank fourth and fifth respectively in franchise history, giving Ellsbury three of the top-five best seasons for stolen bases.

He only managed 39 in his All-Star campaign in 2011 but that was because he was too busy racking up extra-base hits. Ellsbury set career-highs with 46 doubles and 32 home runs that season to finish as the runner-up for the AL MVP award. He became the first 30/30 player in Red Sox history that season. The power surge was a clear outlier based on the rest of his career but the drastic uptick in homers provided him with fewer opportunities to steal bases.

Not only was Ellsbury piling up steals at an elite level, he was also highly efficient at doing so with an 83.9% success rate during his seven seasons in Boston.

Ellsbury’s 35.7 BsR trails only Betts in Red Sox history and his 10.7 BsR in 2013 set a single-season franchise record for the statistic.

His blazing speed was the dominant factor in his game but unfortunately, Ellsbury used those wheels to go speeding out of town when the Yankees offered him a lucrative free-agent deal. The contract turned out to be a bust in the long run so the Red Sox dodged a bullet by not topping the offer from their rivals. His underwhelming production in the Bronx took the sting out of the perceived betrayal so we can now look back fondly at memories of a young Ellsbury racing around the bases.