The Giants Have Stolen 68, 68 And 69 Bases In Three Seasons, And Buster Posey Has Spent Two Of Them Asking For More

San Francisco stole 68 bases in 2024. It stole 68 bases in 2025. It has stolen 69 through 147 games of 2026, with fifteen left to play.

Buster Posey has been the club's president of baseball operations for two of those three seasons, and this week he told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that he has added a third word to the pitching and defense he took the job talking about.

"What I think about base stealing or taking the extra base is that as much as it helps with run production, it sets a tone for me," Posey said. "And, gosh, I've banged my head on the wall for two years because I want that tone set so much. You want to be the team that's on the front foot."

The season total is not where that change would show up first, and the two halves of the season inside it are.

Through June 30 the Giants stole 27 bases in 85 games and were thrown out twelve times, a success rate of 69.2 percent. From July 1 forward they have stolen 42 in 62 games and been thrown out ten times, 80.8 percent. The two halves belong to the same club in the same year and they are not the same team on the bases. One of them runs at 0.318 steals a game and the other at 0.677.

That second figure is the one worth holding still. Across the major leagues since July 1, thirty clubs have stolen 1,228 bases in 1,838 team games, a rate of 0.668. San Francisco is at 0.677. Ranked against the other twenty-nine clubs over that stretch, the Giants are twelfth.

They finished 29th in 2025 and 29th in 2024.

What changed at the same time the running did#

The club that has been stealing bases since July is not the club that was not stealing them in May.

Luis Arraez stole ten bases in 105 games for San Francisco and was traded to Philadelphia on August 3. Heliot Ramos stole three in 74 and went to the Yankees the same afternoon. Casey Schmitt stole nine and was caught once before a torn meniscus in his left knee put him on the injured list on July 28; he was moved to the 60-day list on August 29 and will not play again this year. Willy Adames stole five before a left elbow sprain on August 24. Matt Chapman last played on June 30.

Four Giants have stolen nine or more bases this season. One is on the 60-day injured list and one is in Philadelphia.

What is left is younger and faster. Jonah Cox, who debuted on May 31, has nine steals and two times caught in 47 games. Grant McCray is five for five this year and ten for ten across 93 career games, having never been thrown out in the major leagues. Christian Koss is three for three. Slusser reports that Cox ranks in the top one percent of the league in sprint speed and quotes an American League scout describing him as gone in a flash.

Jung Hoo Lee is the club leader with twelve, and his season is split in the same place the team's is. He stole no bases in his first 56 games. He has stolen twelve in his next 78, the first of them on June 6, and has been caught once all year. Lee told the Chronicle that lower-body injuries had been holding him back and that he felt stronger in the second half.

The part Posey was not talking about#

Posey's own framing is explicitly not about stolen bases, which matters because the stolen base is the only piece of this that a box score records.

"You don't have to have the best sprint speed to be a dynamic baserunner," he said. "Sometimes I get a little bit annoyed with, 'Well, personnel, personnel, personnel.' Yeah, to a certain extent. But we've also seen the guys that don't have elite sprint speed can take extra bases and force the issue."

The two veterans he names as the men setting that tone are Rafael Devers and Chapman. The league has credited Devers with no stolen bases and no times caught stealing in 624 plate appearances this season. Chapman is 0 for 2 in 352. Slusser reports that Devers is the best on the roster at going first to third, doing it twice as often as anyone else, and that he takes the extra base 45 percent of the time, the highest rate on the club among players with at least 170 plate appearances. Those are the Chronicle's figures. Posey stole 23 bases in 1,371 career games.

So there are two claims sitting next to each other. One is about taking ninety feet that nobody is counting. The other is about the number everybody counts, and on that number the Giants remain a long way back. Fifty-eight major league players have stolen fifteen or more bases this season. No Giant has stolen more than twelve. The league leader, Nasim Nuñez of Washington, has 46 by himself against a San Francisco club total of 69.

Fifteen games#

The club is 62-85 and eliminated. Shane Robinson, the first-base coach who works with the baserunners, told Slusser that the staff would rather players err toward aggression with the season over, and that the players have been more free with their decisions because there is nothing to lose.

That is the boundary on all of it. Sixty-two games at a rate set partly by a coaching staff telling men to take chances in September is not the same evidence as a roster built in a winter to do it. At the pace of the last 62 games, fifteen more games produce about ten more steals, which would put the Giants near 79 and short of the 80 they have not reached since 2015.

The claim Posey made this week is a selection criterion, and selection criteria are checkable against what a club actually acquires. The question the 42 steals do not answer is whether San Francisco spends this winter buying a runner, or whether the front office decides it already found two.

Sources: MLB Stats API (team and player hitting, 2024 through 2026; transaction log; game logs for Jung Hoo Lee, Jonah Cox and Rafael Devers; season standings), read September 11. San Francisco Giants front office directory, mlb.com/giants. Susan Slusser, San Francisco Chronicle, "Giants' Buster Posey sees a baserunning breakthrough," published September 10, for all quotations, the first-to-third measurement and the sprint-speed ranking.