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August 12, 2026 · Detroit Tigers · Pick 4

Pick No. 4: You asked if Detroit should run on Cleveland. They should, and tonight is probably the wrong night

The call: Tigers beat Cleveland again Wednesday night at Comerica. Confidence: low.

Before that, the thing 2 of you actually asked for on Sunday, because it turned out to be the same question as the pick.

The comments were pretty direct. "Cleveland and Chicago are the worst and 2nd worst teams in baseball at throwing out runners. Time to let Max show off those wheels." And: "We have to try and do that small ball BS at some point with Zach, Max or someone else who is kind of fast." 18 upvotes between them.

So I went and looked. You're right about Cleveland. You're right about Detroit. And I still don't think tonight's the night, for a reason that isn't in either comment.

You're right about Cleveland

Cleveland has allowed 86 stolen bases and thrown out 16. That's 15.7%, which is 4th worst in baseball. The league throws out 23.1%.

Detroit's own catchers are at 26.1%, 24 of 92, which is better than league average and not something I expected to be typing.

But that 15.7% is 2 different catchers wearing the same uniform

Here's the part that changes the answer.

Austin Hedges has thrown out 2 runners all season. 2. That's the number that built Cleveland's reputation and it's about as bad as a season gets.

Patrick Bailey, who came over from San Francisco and has been catching for Cleveland since May 10, is at 35.3%. The best staff in baseball is Milwaukee at 36.5%, so Bailey's rate with Cleveland is essentially the best in the sport. He was at 25.0% with the Giants, so some of that is probably the pitchers in front of him and I wouldn't want to give him all the credit. It's still not a guy you run on casually.

And Bailey has caught 7 of Cleveland's 9 games this month, to Hedges' 4, with both appearing in 2. He caught last night. If Cleveland is drifting toward Bailey as the everyday guy, the lane you're all pointing at is closing.

You saw it happen last night, actually. Báez went for 3rd in the 7th, Bailey's throw beat him, and José Ramírez dropped it, and Báez scored. That run came from a Cleveland error, not from a stolen base. The throw was fine.

(Those 3 catcher lines add to 78 steals allowed and the team total is 86. The other 8 are attribution I can't cleanly resolve, so I'm flagging it rather than quietly rounding.)

You're also right that Detroit doesn't run

This part isn't close. Detroit attempts a steal on 4.8% of the times a batter reaches 1st base, and that's dead last in baseball. Houston is next at 4.9%. Miami is at 14.7%, roughly 3 times Detroit's rate.

"Times on 1st" here is singles plus walks plus hit by pitches. It misses reaching on an error and it counts a walk that got erased on the next pitch, so it's an approximation. It's the same approximation for all 30 teams, which is what matters for the comparison.

Here's the counterweight nobody in the thread mentioned though. Detroit is 35 for 53. That's 66.0%. The league runs at 76.9%. So Detroit doesn't just run rarely, they run badly, and the rough break even on a steal is usually put somewhere around 70 to 75%. Telling this team to run more, at the rate they've actually converted, is telling them to give away outs.

That's an argument for running better, not for running less. But it's a real answer to "just go more" and I didn't want to skip past it.

Is it the roster? Partly, and less than it used to be

The 3rd commenter sharpened it: avoiding the steal is defensible with a slow roster and not with McGonigle and Clark. That's the claim worth testing.

McGonigle is 11 for 12. He's reached 1st base 167 times and gone on 7.2% of them. That's a guy who's good at this being used carefully, and it's the strongest version of the argument in the thread.

Max Clark, though. He's played 10 games, has 46 plate appearances, and has attempted 0 steals. He made his debut on the road and played his 1st game at Comerica last night. I get the excitement, I've got it too, but there's no evidence either way on him yet and building a strategy around 46 plate appearances is how you end up wrong in public.

The other half of the answer is McKinstry at 1 for 6. That's most of Detroit's caught stealings from one player, and it's probably a chunk of why the staff stopped giving green lights.

And now tonight, which is where I break with you

Foster Griffin gets the ball for Cleveland. He's a lefty. Lefties face 1st base.

Griffin has allowed 6 steals in 133.1 innings and nobody has been thrown out. That's 0.40 attempts per 9 innings, and among the 57 qualified starters in baseball the median is 0.68. He ranks 14th at suppressing the running game. Not elite, top quartile, and enough to trim the opportunity.

So tonight you've got a lefty who runners mostly don't test, and probably the catcher who's been throwing people out. The 5.1% guy is the backup now. The edge you're describing is real and it's aimed at a matchup that isn't on the field tonight.

Thursday might be different. That's Parker Messick, who's 3rd of those same 57 starters at suppressing steal attempts, so honestly, maybe not.

The bigger running game problem tonight is the other one

Cleveland attempts on 12.66% of their times on 1st, and they're 117 for 140, 83.6%. They run constantly and they're good at it.

Framber Valdez has allowed 13 steals and caught nobody, 0.92 attempts per 9, 38th of 57 qualified starters.

Detroit's catchers are above average, which helps. But the team with the running game edge in this game is Cleveland, going the other direction, and in a 1 run game that's where it'll show up.

The call

Tigers win. Low.

Detroit's offense is 11th in baseball at 4.58 runs a game and Cleveland's is 28th at 3.98. Detroit is 8-2 in their last 10 and Cleveland is 2-8. Detroit is home, 59-60, half a game out of the last wild card, and they just scored 6 on a team that had held them to 1.83 a game.

Valdez has a 4.17 ERA which isn't good, but his last 2 starts are 14 innings and 2 earned runs, and the ugly number in his last 6 is one start against the Cubs where he got 2 outs and gave up 6.

What scares me. Griffin is the better pitcher. He's got a 3.31 ERA over 23 starts, 3.06 of it across 22 starts with Washington before the trade, against Valdez at 4.17. I'm picking the worse starter and calling it Low for that reason.

Cleveland is also 6-1 against Detroit this year and the piece I wrote about that concluded there's no mechanism behind it, just variance. Believing my own conclusion means last night was the correction starting. Believing my eyes means Cleveland does something to this lineup that I can't measure. I've written down that it's variance, so I'm picking accordingly, and if they lose 3 of 4 in this series I'll have been wrong twice with the same argument.

Sources: MLB Stats API, pulled 2026-08-12. Team steal totals and steals allowed both come from the team pitching and hitting endpoints, which reconcile exactly against each other league wide at 2,458 steals and 740 caught. Catcher lines are each player's own season rows. Starter rankings are the 57 qualified starters, steal attempts per 9 innings.

Not betting advice.