Aggressive Base-Running Is Cleveland Indians' Biggest Strength So Far In 2016

The Cleveland Indians‘ 2016 season so far has been notable for only two things. The first is their ability to keep pace with the defending World Series champions. The other is the way their aggressive base running has kept their offense afloat this season.

The Indians are ninth in MLB in runs scored despite being only 14th in batting average and 12th in on-base percentage. How do they make up for it? By being aggressive on the base paths.

They lead baseball in sacrifice flies and are fourth in stolen bases. They have only been caught nine times attempting to steal and are the only team in the top five to have been caught less than 10 times.  So far in 2016, the Indians are second in all of baseball in base running runs at 6.7. The Indians are also fifth in hit advancement runs. That is the number of theoretical runs contributed by a base-runner above what would be expected given the situation. The Indians are creating runs by being aggressive.

The leader for the Indians is shortstop Francisco Lindor. He is third in MLB with a 3.5 BRR and is the only Indian in the top 30. This is even more pronounced once you realize that there are no Indians in the top 30 in HAR. Lindor leads the Indians in this category as well at 0.83. In fact, the only meaningful base-running stat where Lindor is not the leader is ground out advancement runs where his double play partner, Jason Kipnis, leads the team.

The Indians are keeping pace in the AL Central thanks to aggressive base running, and Lindor is leading the way at short. If they can keep this up until the starting rotation stabilizes, the Indians could go a long way this year.