Mon May 01, 2023 12:54 pm
Baseball didn't consistently start recording caught stealing until 1951. Before that, CS were recorded only sporadically, and 1920 happened to be one of the years when CS was recorded in the AL.
Clearly managers and players didn't worry to much about success rates back in those days. I looked it up, and in 1920, the league total of SB vs CS was 751-701, so a success rate of not much better than 50/50% was considered acceptable. The contemporary view is that a 67% success rate is needed to make SB pay off. Some of these CS were likely on failed H&R attempts, but then that also raises questions about the value of the H&R--when the runner has to steal whether he gets a good jump or not. Of course, the whole question of steals and H&R must have looked very different in an era before HR became common, but it's kinda interesting to note that this style was then known as scientific baseball.
Anyway, Gardner was clearly on the wrong end of the SB scale in any era, but still, his results might not have seemed extremely notable in his team's context.
That team, the 1920 Cleveland Indians, had an overall base stealing record of 73-93. And Gardner wasn't the only one with a negative steal rate. Wambsganss went 9-18 and Jamieson 2-9. The great Tris Speaker, the team's manager, was 10-13.
Still, Cleveland somehow overcame its negative steal rate. They won the pennant with 98 wins as part of a dramatic three team race with the White Sox (who would soon to be branded the Black Sox) and Babe Ruth's Yankees--in the Babe's first year as a Yank. Then Cleveland won the World Series over Brooklyn, despite posting a steal rate of 2-6. At least Gardner didn't make a steal attempt in the WS.
