I’m genuinely curious if he can pick up where he left off last year, or if teams/pitchers start to respect him and actually plan for him stealing more. Because there’s just no way a guy with his speed should be stealing as many bags as he did
I’m so intrigued by Naylor’s stolen base campaign randomly starting when he came to the mariners - has he been wanting to do this his whole career and no one would give him the green light until now? I’d really appreciate someone taking a statistical deep dive looking at where on earth this outburst comes from. Is it a lack of respect? High baseball IQ? Sheer luck? Some other factor, or a combination of all of these? Did his average lead distance change? How many pickoff attempts has he drawn? What pitches does he steal on? If I had more time I would absolutely be trying to find out how this ultimately quite slow guy randomly had a 2 month long incredibly effective stolen base campaign
Base running is a skill in itself. When he got traded to us he told Dan that he had been working on his base running, specifically stealing bases. Hes really good at studying pitchers and picking up on pitchers who have a long windup. If you notice he also hops around a lot when he's on base to kind of be a distraction to the pitcher.
Yes to this, also first base coach Eric Young Jr. has been coaching players on this so I'm sure he and Naylor had a great mind meld about it and Naylor was off to the races; I remember this from back in April:
A huge piece to the M’s newfound aggression — especially on the basepaths, setting the tone for the team’s identity in 2025 — is found in their first base coach Eric Young Jr.
The Mariners have stolen 32 bases through their first 22 games — already a franchise record to start a season. As of April 22, it places them second in the majors, trailing only the Milwaukee Brewers (34).
This isn’t just a trend. It’s an organizational shift, and at the heart of it is Seattle's first base coach.
Eric Young Jr.'s influence has the Mariners running wild on the basepaths and into the record books
A 10-year MLB veteran who stole 162 bags during his playing days, Young brings a modern, analytical approach to an old-school tactic. Brought in to be the Mariners' bench as part of Dan Wilson’s reshaped staff, Young has become a catalyst for Seattle’s aggression. He’s not just preaching speed — he’s teaching nuance, pitcher tells, timing, pop times, and mental cues.
Players are clearly soaking it up. Mitch Garver, not exactly known for wheels, swiped his first bag since May 2022 back on April 8. Raleigh, who stole six bases all of last year, already has three. And as a whole, the team has combined power with pressure. This is the only Mariners team in their history to hit 30-plus home runs and steal 30-plus bases in the first 22 games of a season.
These are great questions. I’m a data scientist and might be table to take a stab, but I haven’t done anything with baseball. Would the data to answer these be publicly available?
I’m sure all this data is available somewhere - given the stats I see people like foolish baseball employ in their videos it seems like you can get access to this data, but you may have to pay mlb for some of it. BaseballSavant and Stathead (run via Sports-Reference) are the two places I see most commonly cited in statistics heavy baseball videos, I’m not sure where you can get play-by-play data for games but I’m pretty sure it’s also available somewhere (would be very valuable for looking up what pitches Naylor likes to run on for instance - I know baseball savant lets you narrow down the handedness of the pitcher or the pitch type for its base running stats, not sure if they have the raw data there for free to do your own breakdowns of it)
I think he'll be less capable of stealing at will, but over the course of 162 games, he's bound to catch plenty of pitchers napping. His season-long pace after coming to Seattle was 57, 30 through all of 2026 is very doable.
ETA: It's also important to note that raw speed isn't as large of a component to swiping bags as it may seem on the surface.There have been plenty of players who don't have a lot of burst but are menaces on the base paths throughout this game's history. This is because getting a good jump & knowing whether or not your teammate is in a fastball count is arguably even more important.
This right here. I think a lot of his steals came from him being ignored and disrespected because he is arguably the slowest player in baseball. If teams start consistently paying attention to him, I don’t see him getting many steals at all. You can be savvy and have great timing, but at a point, your just too slow.
If Naylor is on base and there is a count where he is fairly certain the pitch will be either down or buried, he will advance 90 feet. Looking at that video going around of all his steals this last season, the majority were off-speed and low, or in the dirt.
The true beauty is, he doesn’t need to steal 30 bases - he just needs the other team to THINK he is going to steal another base as he stands on 1st or 2nd. While I am sure there is no metric for this, it will lead to a few base hits behind him as 1st base holds closer to the bag than they might otherwise for a guy with his speed.
In my opinion, players tend to attempt less stolen bases after getting their bag. However, Josh has way to much heart to be another statistic. I can see him swiping 25-30, realistically.
Honestly I sometimes feel like that’s because players that get the bag are good hitters and now that they’re heavily invested in the team doesn’t want to risk injury. They also happen to be older when they get the bag meaning they’re slower and further risk of injury
I wouldn't be surprised if he is (as much as he can with an infant, and finding a new home and moving!) - working out a bunch before spring training; he may gain a little speed this off season. He is so legitimately pumped to be playing for Seattle for 5 years, and he's such a competitor, and he said at his signing he wished he was coming back to the clubhouse for spring training right away.
Naylor is the kind of guy that doesn't say that stuff without meaning it.
Other teams will be jumpy about him stealing so they'll be looking for it all the time, but that's also great for the Ms to have pitchers and catchers focused more focused on him instead of the batter and others on the field. It's a win-win. I hope he hits 30, but anything works. I love that he's a Mariner :)
Can you imagine if he does the regimen that Julio did to work on his speed? Training with Julio and Ichiro might make me a 10 steal player, and I walk with a cane.
Realistically, I don’t expect a lot of SB’s from Naylor in 2026. He was playing for a contract, impressing his new team, and pitchers hadn’t figured him out yet. Now that he has the contract and other teams are aware of his base running, I think we will see a much more conservative number. My guess is 16.
Imma just be realistic and say 40. The league will have caught on that he's an aggressive runner now, and once the element of surprise is gone it's all speed. He's not fast. So 40 because he's aggressive but he'll also be caught way more often. 40 is still incredible for a first baseman
You get caught at too high of a rate. Josh hasn’t had that problem yet.
You’re afraid of injury. The new mittens they wear help with the hand and wrist injuries. Josh seems pretty durable in general.
You can’t get a good read on the pitcher. With EY Jr. and Josh having better than average ability to read pitchers, I don’t think this is much of a problem.
There’s a man at 2nd or 3rd that is blocking your steal.
Game situation doesn’t call for it.
Given these things, Josh should easily steal 20+ again. I believe if they really let him loose, he could steal 50+.
Conservatively, 75.
If I'm being a gung ho, 486
If I’m being Dae-Ho Lee, 69
Legend.
🐐
Pretty sure he'll play in more than 30 games
I would be so hyped if we get a 30/30 season from our boy
im so confident on 30
I’m genuinely curious if he can pick up where he left off last year, or if teams/pitchers start to respect him and actually plan for him stealing more. Because there’s just no way a guy with his speed should be stealing as many bags as he did
I’m so intrigued by Naylor’s stolen base campaign randomly starting when he came to the mariners - has he been wanting to do this his whole career and no one would give him the green light until now? I’d really appreciate someone taking a statistical deep dive looking at where on earth this outburst comes from. Is it a lack of respect? High baseball IQ? Sheer luck? Some other factor, or a combination of all of these? Did his average lead distance change? How many pickoff attempts has he drawn? What pitches does he steal on? If I had more time I would absolutely be trying to find out how this ultimately quite slow guy randomly had a 2 month long incredibly effective stolen base campaign
Base running is a skill in itself. When he got traded to us he told Dan that he had been working on his base running, specifically stealing bases. Hes really good at studying pitchers and picking up on pitchers who have a long windup. If you notice he also hops around a lot when he's on base to kind of be a distraction to the pitcher.
I think he's smart enough to understand which catchers are the least likely to throw him out too. I love seeing him capitalize on that stuff
Naylz is one of the brightest guys on the field and he takes advantage every night. Thank the lords he was re-signed. 🥰
Yes to this, also first base coach Eric Young Jr. has been coaching players on this so I'm sure he and Naylor had a great mind meld about it and Naylor was off to the races; I remember this from back in April:
https://sodomojo.com/the-secret-weapon-pushing-the-mariners-offense-toward-history-01jsfd6snapp
wow this article is definitely AI-assisted. So many weird uses of em dashes where humans would think of other punctuation, negative parallelisms, etc
These are great questions. I’m a data scientist and might be table to take a stab, but I haven’t done anything with baseball. Would the data to answer these be publicly available?
I’m sure all this data is available somewhere - given the stats I see people like foolish baseball employ in their videos it seems like you can get access to this data, but you may have to pay mlb for some of it. BaseballSavant and Stathead (run via Sports-Reference) are the two places I see most commonly cited in statistics heavy baseball videos, I’m not sure where you can get play-by-play data for games but I’m pretty sure it’s also available somewhere (would be very valuable for looking up what pitches Naylor likes to run on for instance - I know baseball savant lets you narrow down the handedness of the pitcher or the pitch type for its base running stats, not sure if they have the raw data there for free to do your own breakdowns of it)
If he has another great steals year foolish baseball has to do a video on him.
I think he'll be less capable of stealing at will, but over the course of 162 games, he's bound to catch plenty of pitchers napping. His season-long pace after coming to Seattle was 57, 30 through all of 2026 is very doable.
ETA: It's also important to note that raw speed isn't as large of a component to swiping bags as it may seem on the surface.There have been plenty of players who don't have a lot of burst but are menaces on the base paths throughout this game's history. This is because getting a good jump & knowing whether or not your teammate is in a fastball count is arguably even more important.
This right here. I think a lot of his steals came from him being ignored and disrespected because he is arguably the slowest player in baseball. If teams start consistently paying attention to him, I don’t see him getting many steals at all. You can be savvy and have great timing, but at a point, your just too slow.
If they pay attention to him, that’s a win too. Distract the pitcher enough, he’ll make mistakes.
If Naylor is on base and there is a count where he is fairly certain the pitch will be either down or buried, he will advance 90 feet. Looking at that video going around of all his steals this last season, the majority were off-speed and low, or in the dirt.
https://preview.redd.it/esd5up71k08g1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=2eb91a3e39a6178e64663806488ae39a768d4c1c
You can't guess over though. Eh, Joan is probably still okay!
All of them. Every single bag is belong to him.
The true beauty is, he doesn’t need to steal 30 bases - he just needs the other team to THINK he is going to steal another base as he stands on 1st or 2nd. While I am sure there is no metric for this, it will lead to a few base hits behind him as 1st base holds closer to the bag than they might otherwise for a guy with his speed.
Mind games.
Mariner mind games are my favorite
Gonna be the slowest player on record with a 30 / 30
He’s stealing home
Imagine 😂
In my opinion, players tend to attempt less stolen bases after getting their bag. However, Josh has way to much heart to be another statistic. I can see him swiping 25-30, realistically.
Honestly I sometimes feel like that’s because players that get the bag are good hitters and now that they’re heavily invested in the team doesn’t want to risk injury. They also happen to be older when they get the bag meaning they’re slower and further risk of injury
What I loved is that so many of his steals had a real impact. That one in ALDS game 5 was amazing.
I wouldn't be surprised if he is (as much as he can with an infant, and finding a new home and moving!) - working out a bunch before spring training; he may gain a little speed this off season. He is so legitimately pumped to be playing for Seattle for 5 years, and he's such a competitor, and he said at his signing he wished he was coming back to the clubhouse for spring training right away.
Naylor is the kind of guy that doesn't say that stuff without meaning it.
Other teams will be jumpy about him stealing so they'll be looking for it all the time, but that's also great for the Ms to have pitchers and catchers focused more focused on him instead of the batter and others on the field. It's a win-win. I hope he hits 30, but anything works. I love that he's a Mariner :)
My favorite signing in a LONG time.
I think it will be 15 because he will be too busy blasting dongs
All of them. All the bags.
Modern AL record is Ricky with 130. I’d say in that range
It’ll be down as god hopes people start respecting it. I’m going with 27. Not a lot. But more than a guy who could cosplay as wario should be getting.
More than enough from the second slowest player in the league 😂
30/30 season coming up.
The late night ESPN doc on Josh Naylor’s 50/50 season in 2026 is gonna feed families
40 with 20 homers. He’s gonna tell them all to suck it as he nabs each base
Gets to second: “I’m disgusted that you let me steal on you.”
69
Nice.
I'm gonna say 40, and easily
Thiccy Henderson
All of em
For a serious answer, 10. I don't think he'll get close to what he did last year unless teams ignore him again.
I'm calling a 30/30 season ... and I doubt I'm alone in this.
All the bags! He wants all the bags!
200, caught 1 time on purpose
Could Josh Naylor win a fight against a hurricane? What if the hurricane’s name was Josh Naylor?
Can you imagine if he does the regimen that Julio did to work on his speed? Training with Julio and Ichiro might make me a 10 steal player, and I walk with a cane.
Realistically, I don’t expect a lot of SB’s from Naylor in 2026. He was playing for a contract, impressing his new team, and pitchers hadn’t figured him out yet. Now that he has the contract and other teams are aware of his base running, I think we will see a much more conservative number. My guess is 16.
Imma just be realistic and say 40. The league will have caught on that he's an aggressive runner now, and once the element of surprise is gone it's all speed. He's not fast. So 40 because he's aggressive but he'll also be caught way more often. 40 is still incredible for a first baseman
20-25. Other teams will be watching him more this year.
54
I think 18
He's going 40/40 this year. Will commit 0 errors. He will continue to be a batting strategist for the team.
MVP voting will be between Big Dumper and Big Grumper
Let him bat leadoff and steal to his hearts content
162
All of them
You mean Josh “Barry Alan” Naylor?
I’m thinking 20+
43 and 43 bombs
There are a few reasons to not try to steal:
You get caught at too high of a rate. Josh hasn’t had that problem yet.
You’re afraid of injury. The new mittens they wear help with the hand and wrist injuries. Josh seems pretty durable in general.
You can’t get a good read on the pitcher. With EY Jr. and Josh having better than average ability to read pitchers, I don’t think this is much of a problem.
There’s a man at 2nd or 3rd that is blocking your steal.
Game situation doesn’t call for it.
Given these things, Josh should easily steal 20+ again. I believe if they really let him loose, he could steal 50+.
12
No idea but cal will hit 64 hr
45 easily hands-down
11