The Stolen Base Leaders and How the Running Game Changed

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 9 min read

Rickey Henderson's 1,406 steals stand 468 ahead of Lou Brock. A look at the career leaders, the eight 100-steal seasons, the success rate that makes a steal worth it and why the 2023 rules revived the running game.

Rickey Henderson stole 1,406 bases in his career, and the man in second place, Lou Brock, stole 938. The gap between first and second is 468, which makes Henderson's total 50 percent larger than Brock's. Only ten players have reached 700 steals. Six of them had finished their careers by 1930, and the other four played between 1961 and 2003. The stolen base is a skill that the modern game has handled very differently from one era to the next, and the careers on this list are a map of the swings.

This article uses the historical record through the 2025 season to look at the leaders, the eras of the running game and the reasons the number of steals has risen and fallen so sharply. It also explains the part that raw totals hide: how often the runner was thrown out.

The ten players with 700 steals

The historical career list is below. The years are the first and last seasons in which each player appeared. Caught-stealing figures are included where the records are complete, and left out where they are not, since several older players have gaps.

Two features of the table matter. First, six of the ten played mostly in the nineteenth century or the early twentieth. Second, the modern entries cluster in one stretch: Brock, Henderson, Raines and Coleman all had their peak seasons between the mid-1960s and 1990. The running game had two golden ages, and this table is mostly a record of them.

The nineteenth-century numbers

Billy Hamilton and Arlie Latham are on the list because they played when the rules for crediting a stolen base were different from today's. In the 1880s and early 1890s, scorers sometimes gave a runner a steal for taking an extra base on a hit or on a fielder's throw, and caught stealing was not tracked at all, which is why the database has no caught-stealing totals for either man. The single-season record in the database is 138, set by Hugh Nicol in 1887, and the top single seasons before 1900 belong to men like Latham (129 in 1887) and Charles Comiskey (117 that year).

Those numbers are not comparable to Henderson's 130. They were produced under scoring conventions that were tightened in the late 1890s, and nobody can say how many of them would count today. That is why the database's modern leaders, and the era after 1900, are the useful comparison.

Dead ball: Cobb, Collins, Carey and Wagner

Running was a normal part of offense in the 1900s and 1910s. The historical totals for the American and National Leagues show 1.38 steals per team-game in 1911 and 1.37 in 1912, the highest of any season since 1901 in the data. Ty Cobb led the American League in steals six times, including 96 in 1915. Max Carey led the National League ten times with totals between 36 and 63, which tells you that the league leader in some years of that decade stole fewer than 50.

The reason is that runs were scarce. When a team scored 3.4 runs a game, as the 1908 leagues did, one extra base meant something. A runner on second with a single in sight was a real chance at a run, and a bunt, a hit-and-run and a steal were ordinary tools. For the pitching side of the era, see the lowest ERAs in baseball history.

The long decline, 1920 to 1950

The historical data tell a clear story about what happened next. League stolen bases per team-game fell from 1.31 in 1910 to 0.70 in 1920, 0.57 in 1925, 0.44 in 1930 and 0.36 in 1935. By 1950 the rate had reached 0.26, the lowest in the data. In 1950 the American and National Leagues together stole 650 bases, less than half of Henderson's career total.

The reasons are not hard to see. The home run changed the arithmetic. When any hitter can clear the fence, giving up an out to gain a base is a worse bet, since the out costs more than the base is worth. In the 1950s the leaders were small numbers: Minnie Minoso led the American League with 31 steals in 1951, and Willie Mays led the National League four years in a row from 1956 with totals between 27 and 40. Luis Aparicio started a streak in 1956 of nine straight American League stolen-base titles, and in 1956 he did it with 21.

1962: Maury Wills reopens the running game

The first big break came in 1962, when Maury Wills of the Dodgers stole 104 bases, passing Cobb's 96 from 1915 and becoming the first player to reach 100 in a season since Billy Hamilton did it in 1894. He won the National League MVP award, and he stole 94 more in 1965. League-wide steals rose from 923 in 1960 to 1,348 in 1962, and 1,908 by 1970.

Brock followed. He led the National League in steals eight times, in 1966 to 1969 and 1971 to 1974, and his 118 in 1974 broke Wills's modern record. Brock's career line was .293 with 3,023 hits and 938 steals, but a caution applies: he was caught 307 times, so his career success rate was about 75 percent.

The eight 100-steal seasons

Since 1900 only four players have reached 100 steals in a season, and they did it eight times between them. All are listed here.

Henderson's 130 in 1982 is the highest total since 1900, and he was caught 42 times that year. Coleman's three seasons are all in his first three years in the major leagues. Taken together, six of the eight seasons came between 1980 and 1987, and the rest of the league was running with them: stolen bases per team-game rose to 0.78 in 1980 and 0.85 in 1987, the highest since 1919.

Rickey Henderson, the standard

Henderson led the American League in steals twelve times, in 1980 through 1986, 1988 through 1991 and 1998. He passed Brock's career record in 1991 and kept going. At the end of his career he had 3,081 games, 2,295 runs and 2,190 walks, so he was much more than a runner: he reached base so often that he had more chances to steal than anyone else.

His success rate was about 81 percent, with 1,406 steals against 335 caught stealing. Tim Raines had a better ratio, with 808 steals and only 146 caught stealing, about 85 percent, and he led the National League in steals for four years in a row, 1981 to 1984. Coleman was at about 81 percent. These are the players who made the steal profitable rather than merely frequent.

The break-even point: why success rate matters

A stolen-base attempt is a bet. If it works, the runner moves up a base and has a better chance of scoring. If he is caught, the team loses a baserunner and an out. Analysts have long put the break-even success rate at roughly 70 to 75 percent, depending on the inning, the score and the number of outs, and that range is a guide rather than a law.

The worked example is simple. A runner who tries 20 steals in a season and succeeds 15 times is at 75 percent, near the line, and has probably added little. A runner who succeeds 17 times and is caught 3 is at 85 percent and has helped. For the league as a whole, the historical totals show the success rate rising from about 63 percent in 1960 and 64 percent in 1970 to 68 percent in 1990, 72 percent in 2010 and 80 percent in 2023. The league learned not to run unless the odds were good.

Why the running game faded in the 1990s and 2000s

After the 1980s peak, steals declined. Stolen bases per team-game dropped to 0.60 in 2000, 0.53 in 2005 and 0.52 in 2015, and the lowest recent figures were 0.47 in 2019 and 0.46 in 2021. A commonly cited reason is the return of the home run, which made the steal a worse trade, along with a growing view among teams that an out is expensive. For more on the measurement tools behind that kind of thinking, see the story of pitch-tracking technology.

The result was a game in which the leader could hold a title with a smaller total. In 2022, Jon Berti led the major leagues with 41 steals, and the combined league total was 2,486, about 0.51 per team-game.

2023: the jump

Then everything changed. League steals jumped from 2,486 in 2022 to 3,503 in 2023, a rise of about 41 percent, and the success rate reached 80.2 percent, the highest of any season since 1960 in the database. The totals stayed up: 3,617 in 2024 and 3,440 in 2025.

Three rule changes for 2023 explain most of it. A pitch clock gave pitchers 15 seconds to deliver with the bases empty and 20 with a runner on (the runners-on limit was cut to 18 seconds in 2024). Pitchers were limited to two pickoff throws or step-offs per plate appearance, and a third that did not retire the runner became a balk. And the bases were enlarged from 15 to 18 inches square, which shortened the distance between them slightly. Check the official MLB rules for the current wording.

The individual leaders reflected it. Ronald Acuña of Atlanta stole 73 bases in 2023 while hitting 41 home runs and .337, and he won the National League MVP award; Esteury Ruiz of Oakland stole 67. In 2024, Elly De La Cruz of Cincinnati led the majors with 67. The 2023 jump brought the game back to a rate not seen since 1997, though not to the levels of the 1980s.

What the scorer counts as a steal

The modern definition is narrower than the nineteenth-century one. A runner is credited with a stolen base when he advances a base without the help of a hit, a putout, an error, a force-out, a fielder's choice, a passed ball, a wild pitch or a balk. If the runner moves up on one of those, no steal is recorded. A runner who is put out while trying to steal is charged with a caught stealing, and the fielders receive the assist and putout as on any other play.

Two situations produce confusion. The first is the double steal, in which two runners go at once: each is scored separately, so one can be credited with a steal while the other is thrown out or advances on the throw. The second is defensive indifference, when the fielding team makes no attempt to stop a runner, typically late in a game with a lead. The scorer does not credit a steal in that case, and the runner's total does not rise. That rule is the reason a modern total is cleaner than a nineteenth-century one: it records only the bases a runner took against a defense trying to stop him.

The distinction also affects fantasy leagues, where stolen bases are one of the standard scoring categories. A fast player who is rarely allowed to run, or one who is held back by a manager who dislikes risk, will produce a small total no matter how quick he is, which is why attempts matter as much as speed.

Reading a steals line

When you see a stolen-base total, ask three questions. How many times was the runner caught? A player who steals 30 and is caught 15 times has probably cost his team runs. How often did he get on base? Henderson's totals depend on his on-base percentage of .401, and a fast player who rarely reaches base has few chances. And what era is it? In 1950 the American League leader had 15 steals, and in 2023 the leaders ran from 73 down to 32 by the twelfth place.

For related reading, compare the all-time hitters in the batting average leaders, and for the extreme end of the team ledger, the worst seasons in baseball history.

Common questions

Who has the most career stolen bases? Rickey Henderson, with 1,406. Lou Brock is second at 938.

Who holds the single-season record? In the historical data it is Hugh Nicol's 138 in 1887, but that was set under older scoring rules. Since 1900 the record is Henderson's 130 in 1982.

How many players have stolen 100 bases in a season since 1900? Four players in eight seasons: Wills, Brock, Henderson and Coleman.

Why did stolen bases rise in 2023? The pitch clock, the limit on pickoff attempts and the larger bases made running easier. League steals rose about 41 percent over 2022.

Is a steal always good? No. It helps only if the runner succeeds at a rate above the break-even point, usually put at roughly 70 to 75 percent.

Where to go next

For this year's leaders, check the league leaders page, then see how the numbers fit with the standings. Fantasy players can start with the fantasy hub, where stolen bases are one of the scoring categories in many leagues, and read how MLB tiebreakers work to see how close races are decided.