​About a week ago, Sports Illustrated’s Jason La Canfora set out to test a hunch that had been buzzing in Baltimore for three straight seasons: this team cannot run the bases. His July 1 piece on the Orioles’ fielding and baserunning woes laid out a host of metrics, and the overall picture wasn’t pretty. In truth, the Orioles aren’t the absolute worst, but the impression still stings, because, as La Canfora noted, the skipper “keeps begging for clean games and smart baseball but it’s doubtful this team delivers.” Running has certainly been one of the perennial blind spots for the Orioles in 2026. Using FanGraphs’ Base Running Runs, Baltimore sits at -1 and ranks 19th in the majors, which is below average and far from catastrophic but wasted when you have players with good speed like Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Leody Taveras, Dylan Beavers, and even utility infielder Blaze Alexander. So why does it feel like the Orioles have become the running joke of the sport on the bases?
Take a closer look at several other baserunning metrics, and the picture grows more discouraging. Their stolen-base success rate is 71.6%, placing them 25th in baseball. Only the White Sox, Tigers, Rockies, Twins, and the last-place Mets do worse. Most analytics departments treat a 75–78% success rate as the threshold where the risk is offset by the reward, so Baltimore is clearly adding negative value on the bases. Add to that the team’s steal value at second base, which sits at -1 and ranks 27th, and their extra-base take values at -4, or 20th in the league, indicating they consistently fail to advance from first to third on singles or to score from second on doubles at a league-average rate.
If you dig deeper into individual “caught stealing” figures, a fuller, more frustrating risk-reward calculus emerges. The club’s standout talent, Gunnar Henderson—a player with both power and wheels—seems to be a magnet for baserunning misadventure. Getting picked off twice in a single game isn’t just unlucky; it’s nearly routine for Baltimore’s shortstop this season. Henderson has just seven steals on the year, a remarkably low total for a player of his athletic profile, especially considering he’s been caught four times.
There are several players whose on-base aggression on the bases is costing Baltimore more than it’s worth. Even though scouts still project Jackson Holliday as a 25-steal threat down the line, he’s currently stealing bases at a career-low 68% clip, well below the roughly 78% league-average benchmark. The pattern extends to many others: Colton Cowser has been caught stealing twice and has successfully stolen only four bags; Dylan Beavers has shown similar tendencies that aren’t translating into meaningful gains on the bases. In short, the Orioles’ baserunning inefficiencies are not confined to one or two players; they appear to be a broader organizational issue that undermines otherwise talented performances on the field.