Each off-season, we fill these pages with transaction analysis. We delve into the trades and signings of free agents, qualifying offers, DFAs, non-tenders, Rule 5 picks, and minor league deals, and we also cover hiring managers and firing squads. We rarely give much space to the arrival and departure of coaches. Even the top coaches, big-name hitters, pitching coaches, and bench coaches go about their work almost unnoticed. It’s almost impossible to know what effect they have, if any, and because their heads are the first to roll when things go wrong, they come and go in alarming numbers. So when the Mets let Antoan Richardson, their best known first baseman, leave for the division rival Braves in November, I never wrote anything about it. I had some thoughts about the development, but not enough analysis to fill a thousand word article. I practiced skeet for 10 words, and wrote about Salvador Perez’s contract extension instead. Now that the Mets haven’t had Richardson, and the Braves have, for half a season, let’s get that alignment right.
In 2025, the Mets were successful on 89% of their steal attempts. That just wasn’t the best sign in baseball. The difference between the first-place Mets and the second-place Cubs was greater than the difference between the Cubs and the Astros, who finished 25th. Four teams combined for New York’s 147 steals, but because the Mets were almost never caught, Baseball Prospectus they still credit them with putting up the most base steals of any team in the game.
Once you remove the teams with zeros and blanks in their SB and CS columns, only five teams in our database have ever used a higher stolen base percentage than the 2025 Mets. But four of those teams played in seasons with incomplete statistical data (increasing the success rate, because they usually don’t include failed attempts), and one came in the shortened 2020 season and involved 29 total attempts. The 2025 Mets are arguably the most successful steals in major league history.
This is not news to you. We wrote a lot about it. But maybe we should have made more of the fact that the 2023 Mets were at 89%, meaning they were the most successful team before they hit their record two years later, and the thirty-four 2024 Mets (out of 2,200) in our database are at 83%.
Now, because of the 2023 rule changes, we have to take all these numbers with a grain of salt. Even though the league’s success rate has been on the decline since 2023, I’m not sure anyone has been able to compare the steal numbers from the Pizza Box Base Era to earlier eras. Regardless, even if we’re just talking about those three seasons, the Mets stand out in a big way. They twice tied for the highest hitting streak in baseball, and ranked fourth in another season. In those three seasons, their combined success rate was 87.1%. The difference between them and the second place team is the difference between second and 15th place. And they did all this with a team that was slow as dirt. They turned the plodding Juan Soto, who had never stolen more than 12 bases in a season despite getting on base almost as often as he breathed, into the National League steals champion. Their lack of speed kept their on-base numbers down, but in those three years, they were pretty good at stealing bases.
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One thing those three seasons have in common: Richardson served as the Mets’ first baseman for three seasons. Richardson spent the last three seasons as the Giants’ first baseman, during which time San Francisco achieved an 80% steals rate, the fifth-highest mark in baseball. A year or two into his position in Flushing, Richardson’s title expanded to include “running game coordinator,” and by 2025, he looked like a pro. Statcast tracks each baserunner’s distance from the base when the pitcher releases the ball during stolen base opportunities. When they didn’t steal, the Mets were tied for third in shortstops in the game. They were very conservative. However, when they did steal, they were leading the game by a large margin. They always seemed to know when it was a good time to run. They just didn’t get a good jump. They get ridiculous jumps. They were walking before the pitchers even started to deliver. It was funny. Sometimes it looked like Richardson would just stand by first and then tell the runner when to take off. Here’s Soto leaping toward second and off the back of Met Freddy Peralta:
The Mets wanted to keep Richardson around through 2026, and Richardson wanted to stay. However, things became difficult. MLB teams are assigned only four training camps that come with pensions. The Mets reportedly offered a big raise, but the two sides couldn’t agree on a salary, so they agreed he could look at other parts. Presumably, Richardson didn’t get what he wanted, because at one point, he came back and asked for the same deal the Mets had already offered him. However, the Mets had filled all of their retired coaching positions. It is not clear whether they did not expect Richardson to return to the table, it was to check the timing, or they simply wrote him off after the negotiations did not go well.
The news that Richardson is not only leaving, but has left the team’s hated rival, came as a shock. It has sparked more headlines and fan disapproval than the usual stories about a first-time coach. On the other hand, the Braves were so happy that Michael Harris II told reporters that Austin Riley, the owner of seven stolen bases, will take 20 years. I’ve been waiting patiently to explore the stolen base story of the two groups, and now that we’re halfway there, we have enough data to start digging.
The story is simple in Queens. As everyone feared, the Mets’ running game collapsed when Richardson headed to unincorporated Cobb County. The Mets currently rank 25th in baseball with 40 steals. According to Statcast, their jump in steals went from the biggest in baseball by a mile to the middle of the pack. Their success rate dropped to 66%, the worst mark in the game. With the steal against the Braves on Monday night, Soto is on pace for another 12-steal season. The Mets probably had to deal with a bit of a regression after posting the best stolen base percentage of all time, but now they are the worst team in the game in stolen bases. Statcast thinks they have posted the fewest of any team in stolen base attempts, and ranks them 27th in total base value. Let’s review that graph from the beginning, shall we?
Oh, and let’s use our favorite math comparison too. The Mets just aren’t at the bottom in terms of success. They followed with more. The difference between the 30th-place Mets and the 29th-place Twins is about the same as the difference between the Twins and the 19th-place team, which is Antoan Richardson’s Atlanta Braves.
In defiance of the Greek god of neat stories, Richardson hasn’t immediately turned the Braves into a steals juggernaut. Things are getting weird. The Braves have gotten the best jump on their steal. In 2025, they averaged 23.6 feet from the bag in the time a pitcher released the ball, 16th best in baseball. This year, they are in ninth place with 24.7 meters. But they’re averaging 86 steals, four more than the 82 they set in 2025, and their success rate hasn’t changed much. In 2025, the Braves ranked 17th with a 77% success rate. So far this year, they are at 75%. So the Braves are almost in the same place as they were last year, but before we go any further, we need to note that they took a bumpy road to get there.
These pedestrian metrics hide the impact of the learning curve. The Braves are off to a slow start this season, going 14-for-22 on stolen base attempts in March and April. Not only that, but they started the season by being selected a a lot. By May 12, their runners had been picked 10 times, twice as many as any other team, and I chose that day specifically because the Cubs picked them twice that night. In one game. It was bad enough that manager Walt Weiss was forced to talk to reporters. That’s the thing about Richardson’s anticipatory approach. When it works, he looks like a master, moving so early that the opposing catcher rarely bothers to try to throw.
And if it doesn’t work, well, it looks like this:
Perhaps opposing defenses wised up to Richardson’s early methods, or perhaps Atlanta needed some time to get the hang of this aggressive approach. Since May 1, the Braves are 33-for-41, an 80% success rate that ranks eighth in baseball. And since their double interview on May 12, they have been re-elected. They are no longer leading the league. Riley may not be on the 20-steal mark, but he already has a career-high five. The fifth came Monday night against the Mets. With Peralta on the mound, Riley broke early and so caught the Mets that the catcher didn’t bother throwing.
I’m not predicting that the Braves are going to snatch the record for the record like the Mets did last year, but it looks like they’re in a better place than they were at the beginning of the season. They are certainly in a better place than the Mets.
