Milwaukee Brewers Jonathan Villar Caught Stealing

Jonathan Villar tried to steal third last night against the Padres, and Milwaukee Brewers Twitter wasn’t happy about it at all.

Villar was eventually ruled out for that play, and Milwaukee Brewers Twitter wasn’t happy, to say the least.

Well, me being me, I thought that the whole sentiment was being blown out of proportion. After all, off the top of my head, I could only think of one other time where Villar was caught stealing.

Fellow Milwaukee Brewers blogger Travis Sarandos confirmed that it was the first time Villar was caught stealing third.

So, naturally I went to Baseball Reference’s Play Index and well, Jonathan Villar Leads Major League Baseball in Caught Stealing-currently sitting at the one spot with five times CS. Jonathan Villar, Cesar Hernandez, George Springer, Mallex Smith and Nori Aoki round out the top five of Caught Stealing (all at five).

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Villar came into the League in 2013 with the Astros and in that period, 33 other people have been caught stealing more than him. Including former Milwaukee Brewers CF Carlos Gomez who’s been caught 30 times to Villar’s 19.

On the flip side, however, Villar leads the NL with stolen bases at 11 this season is second in all of the MLB to Jose Altuve (who has 13).  Now Stolen Bases and a number of times Caught Stealing don’t tell the whole story.

That’s where we bring wSB (Weighted Stolen Bases ) into this little story that I’m trying to weave. wSB, as defined by FanGraphs, is the number of runs a player contributes to his team by stealing bases, as compared to the average player. 

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To be more specific a value above zero indicates that the player has contributed more runs than the average player would have given the same number of opportunities; a value below zero indicates that player has contributed fewer runs than an average player given those opportunities.

When you look at this list, Villar ranks 79th in wSB (at 0.2), behind Keon Broxton (0.4) who is now down in the Minors and Hernan Perez, who is ranked 18th (with a wSB of 0.6).

So yes Milwaukee Brewers Twitter, you have ever right to be upset that Villar got caught stealing last night. It won’t be the last either, but that doesn’t mean we should be clamoring to bring Orlando Arcia up, although all signs point to that happening soon.