Ryan Romano: O's run bases well, despite lack of steals

Every so often, I hear legends -- faint whispers upon the breeze -- of Orioles squads that would steal bases. Brian Roberts, Brady Anderson, Al Bumbry: These speedsters could constantly threaten to break for the open bag, and many times they made good on that threat. But they have come and gone, and the team has sorely missed their presence, especially as of late. For the third straight season, the Orioles rank last in the majors in stolen bases. On a more advanced basis, they don't fare much better: According to FanGraphs' wSB metric, their inability to swipe has cost them 1.6 runs this season, which slots them 21st in all of baseball.

Yet the Orioles have still run the bases pretty well. Overall, they've earned 1.8 runs in this regard, good enough for 13th in baseball. By the other two components of FanGraphs' baserunning metric -- wGDP, which analyzes the frequency of double plays, and UBR, which looks at runner advancement on a number of scenarios -- they currently sit 10th in all of baseball. While the O's may not steal a great deal of bases, they don't plod their way from first to home.

Let's begin with wGDP. The Orioles actually have a fair amount of double plays to their name, ranking 13th in the majors with 60. That's a function of their high-caliber offense, though: The Orioles have put more runners on base, so they've given their opponents more chances to turn two. Per Baseball-Reference, they've earned 538 double-play "opportunities" (defined as a plate appearance with less than two outs and a runner on first base); their double-play rate is 11 percent, in line with the major-league average.

One player stands above the rest when it comes to double plays, or the absence thereof: Chris Davis. Since breaking out in 2013, he's set the pace the majors with 9.5 wGDP runs, and this season has been no different. Aside from him, a number of other players -- chiefly Manny Machado, Pedro Alvarez, and Hyun Soo Kim -- have worked around the rally killer. As a team that puts the ball in the air pretty often, the Orioles don't risk running into double plays very often; these players' efforts have removed even more of the uncertainty.

As good as the O's have been with avoiding double plays, their true skill has shone with their ability to advance. B-R tracks a number of situations in which a runner can take an extra base -- if he's on first when the batter hits a single, he can move to third; if it's a double, he can score; and so on. It combines all of these into XBT rate, or Extra Bases Taken rate. Here, the Orioles compare pretty well to the competition, with a 43 percent clip that ranks seventh. When they've had an opportunity to move up an additional 90 feet, the Orioles haven't hesitated. Nor have they come up short that often: On only 20 occasions have they made an out on the basepaths, the fourth-lowest figure in the majors.

Davis, surprisingly, takes the cake here as well: He's been worth 1.7 UBR runs this year. Aside from him, the best performers are simply the average ones. Prior to 2016, Matt Wieters had cost the Orioles 16.2 runs with his advancement; thus far this season, he's been worth -0.1 runs in that area, which amounts to a big upgrade. J.J. Hardy (-6.1 UBR pre-2016, 0.0 UBR 2016) and Mark Trumbo (-5.1 UBR pre-2016, 0.0 UBR 2016) fit this mold as well.

Dan Duquette deserves a fair amount of the credit for this. The Orioles don't have any truly awful baserunners -- the David Ortizes and Billy Butlers of the world -- which compensates for their lack of elite quickness. But I think that third base coach Bobby Dickerson might have brought this about. In his fourth season at the position, Dickerson, derisively known as "Windmill" among some fans, seems to have exercised more caution in sending runners. He hasn't hesitated to flail his left arm at the right time, such as this weekend against the Rays' inexperienced outfielders. On other occasions, though, he's played it safe, likely saving the Orioles from a few embarrassing TOOTBLANs. When you have your sluggers running the bases competently, who needs the speedsters of old?

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.