How many bases can you steal and still make the playoffs?

[apolivka]

Apparently right about 551. This team was #1 in offense (at Royals) in the league and won 94 games. Playoffs start on Monday.

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=263985

My goal going into this season was to steal as many bases as I possibly could while still being a competitive team. I previously had a "all steals" type team that stole 516 bases. I broke that record with 9 games to go. I'm not sure if it's a record for all '86 teams, but I'd bet it is, or at least it's pretty darn close.

551 steals is great but, frankly, a bit less than I had hoped. I think Royals stadium probably hurt me a bit, and I would have stolen more at Fenway. With several of my big base stealers (Lopes, Davis, Henderson, Molitor, Uribe, Nixon) hitting .236, .223, .211, .232, .207, and .193 it really cut back on their stealing potential. I was certainly hoping for a few more hitters parks in the league. I probably would have stolen a few more by dumping the Hayes/Jones platoon earlier and playing Carter at 1st and putting Nixon in OF. The problem there would have been spending the extra 7 million dollars since there was ZERO pitching left.

After the autodraft, I thought this team had an outside shot to steal 600. But in retrospect, I don't think I could happen in a 100 million dollar league. The pitching (especially the relief pitching) is just too strong here. On my $80M dollar previous team, I tended to get a lot of cheap steals late in games against the .50 -- .90 cent guys who give up a lot of hits and usually have crappy holds. In this league, that almost never happened. Also, since we were primarily a pitcher's park league, the starters went much longer into most games anyway. The starters were, of course, better pitchers, and it means fewer relievers are used. A couple of Fenways or Fultons probably would have meant a few more steals as the starters would get shelled and give way to worse relievers, and I would have gotten more BPSingles to potentially steal. (It might have cost me a decent number of wins, however, as my team wasn't set up to win at such parks)

Anyway, a really fun experiment. Thought some people might be interested. I went "super aggressive" stealing all season. Most of my players (Davis, Lopes, Sax, Nixon, Henderson, Pendleton, Lawless) were set to "steal more". I was successful 73.5% of the time while the league average was 70.2%. Estimating here, but I think I was gunned down trying to steal home at least 20 times.