On Wednesday night, I sent Michael Baumann a Slack message asking him the first question in today’s mailbag: How many teams have never had a 30/30 season? “Phew,” he said. “That’s a good one.” I told him I’d be answering it, but I thought it was a fun bit of trivia and wanted to know what his guess would be. I was on my way back from my softball game, and I told him I’d look it up as soon as I got home. But Baumann was impatient. He proceeded to run the search himself and answer the question for me.
“Thanks for doing the mailbag for me lol,” I said. He replied, “I had that thought. I just couldn’t help myself.” That’s the type of impulsive, obsessive behavior that drives us to answer your mailbag questions every week. Like you, we love all that is trivial, whimsical, historical, hypothetical, strategic, pedantic, gigantic, nitty, gritty, and silly about baseball. Your passion is our passion. Anyway, because Baumann couldn’t resist, part of the answer to the first question comes from his initial Stathead search. He told me to run my own search, just in case he missed something in his fervor.
We’ll get to the answer to that 30/30 question in a moment. We’ll also answer your questions on the teams with the greatest difference between cumulative player WAR generated and actual team wins, bases-loaded walks, and how to get your baseball fix when you’re short on time. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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Dear FanGraphs team,
Jordan Walker needs another 13 home runs and 20 steals to become the first 30/30 player in Cardinals history. How many other teams have never had a 30/30 player?
Thanks!
Kevin
Let me begin by saying that I don’t think Jordan Walker, who leads the Cardinals with 10 stolen bases, is going to get to 30 steals. Every projection system we have here at FanGraphs forecasts his median rest-of-season stolen base tally somewhere between seven and nine. However, let’s remember that a lot of the data being factored into these projections comes from a previous, much lesser version of the Cardinals right fielder.
Entering play Friday, through 65 games this season (out of the Cardinals’ 66), Walker is slashing .302/.358/.561 with 17 home runs and a 156 wRC+. Our Depth Charts peg him for a .253/.316/.431 line (110 wRC+) with 14 homers in 86 games the rest of the way, slightly better than the .252/.313/.425 line (108 wRC+) with 12 homers in 83 games that ZiPS expects. As I’ve written in previous mailbags, I believe that Walker’s improvements are sustainable. But even if he gets on base more than the projections say he will, and therefore has more opportunities to steal, there’s still an 11-steal gap between his most optimistic median stolen base projection and the 20 more he’d need to make Cardinals history. That’s a lot of ground to make up, especially when you consider that Walker still doesn’t really walk that much. His walk rate this season is 7.5%, which ranks in the 30th percentile, and he’s gone 52 straight plate appearances without drawing a walk. That’s fine for St. Louis because he’s hitting the snot out of the ball right now, but it limits his chances to steal, especially because he isn’t much of a threat to swipe third base. He’s 0-for-2 this season when taking off from second (but 3-for-6 in his career), compared to 10-for-11 when stealing from first. More than 40% of Walker’s hits this season have gone for extra bases; all those doubles and home runs curb his opportunities to swipe second.
Then again, Walker has stolen three bases during this walkless stretch, and he’s only been on first 12 times, on 10 singles and two fielder’s choices. Eight of those 12 times on first base came without a man on second, meaning he really only had eight opportunities to steal second during that stretch, and he did so successfully on three of them. That’s an extremely small sample, to be clear, so we can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from the data, but if these last 12 games mark the start of a more aggressive Walker, that could greatly improve his shot at 30 steals. It would also align with what the Cardinals are seeing from him.
This week at Citi Field, I asked Cardinals manager Oli Marmol about Walker’s baserunning, specifically when it comes to steals. Marmol credited Walker’s strides as a basestealer to the 24-year-old’s added confidence in his game. “It’s freed him up to just be an athlete and go out and compete,” the manager said. “This guy can move well, and he’s confident in picking his spots.”
We’ve known for a while now that Walker possesses the raw power to hit 30 home runs in a season, but despite his 6-foot-6, 250-pound frame, he also boasts plus-plus speed. At 29.1 feet/second, his sprint speed this season ranks in the 93rd percentile. A lot of his success at the plate can be attributed to the amount of time he’s spent honing his mechanics, studying pitchers, and game-planning with his coaches and teammates, and the same is true for his baserunning. Walker’s done a lot of prep work to be a better basestealer, Marmol said. Confidence begets more confidence, and getting positive results from hard work and preparation leads to more hard work and more preparation. It’s all related. And if his confidence continues to grow, and his skills and instincts as a baserunner keep improving, we could see an uptick in stolen bases from Walker. Will that lead to the Cardinals’ first 30/30 season? Probably not in 2026. But do I think Walker could be a 30/30 guy in the future? Absolutely.
OK, so now to answer your question. The Cardinals are one of six teams that haven’t had a 30/30 season, along with the White Sox, Tigers, Twins, Padres, and Rays. At this time last year, the Diamondbacks would’ve also been part of that group, but Corbin Carroll became their first 30/30 player when he finished the 2025 season with 31 home runs and 32 steals.
However, just because the Cardinals have never had a 30/30 player doesn’t mean that a St. Louis player has never recorded such a season. Outfielder Ken Williams registered the first ever 30/30 season in 1922 while playing for the St. Louis Browns, who moved to Baltimore after the 1953 season. The franchise had to wait 99 years before its next 30/30 player, when Cedric Mullins hit 30 homers and swiped 30 bases. Remarkably, Mullins is the only player to have a 30/30 season with exactly 30 homers and exactly 30 steals.
The Royals were the last team before Arizona to get their first 30/30 player, when Bobby Witt Jr. hit 30 homers and swiped 49 bags as a rookie in 2023. He did it again the next year, with 32 home runs and 31 stolen bases. Kansas City is also one of three teams to only have one 30/30 player but multiple 30/30 seasons, along with the Astros (Jeff Bagwell, 1997 and 1999) and Pirates (Barry Bonds, 1990, 1992). Only three teams have had the same player post three 30/30 seasons. Howard Johnson was the first; he went 30/30 in 1987, 1989, and 1991 with the Mets. Next was Barry Bonds with the Giants, who had three straight 30/30 seasons (1995-1997). The third player is José RamÃrez (2018, 2024, 2025). He already has 24 steals this year, but with only 10 home runs, it seems like the Guardians are going to have to wait at least another year before becoming the first team to get four 30/30 seasons from the same player. If RamÃrez does record another 30/30 campaign in his career, he’d become the fourth player ever to achieve the feat at least four times, along with Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonds (1969, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978), and Alfonso Soriano (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006).
There have only been three times when two teammates have each had a 30/30 season in the same year. The Mets have two of those pairs: In 1987, Johnson and Darryl Strawberry became the first duo to do it in the same season, while Francisco Lindor and Juan Soto did it last year. The 1996 Rockies, with Dante Bichette and Ellis Burks, are the team sandwiched between the 1987 and 2025 Mets.
After Williams founded the 30/30 club in 1922, it took 34 years for another player, Willie Mays, to become its second member. Mays then followed up his 36-homer, 40-steal campaign in 1956 with 35 home runs and 38 stolen bases in 1957. Bobby Bonds notched the Giants’ third 30/30 season — their first in San Francisco — and the fifth one for any team, in 1969. Bonds went on to have two other teams’ first 30/30 seasons (Yankees, 1975; Angels, 1977), and in 1978, he became the first player to split a 30/30 season between two teams, the White Sox having traded him to the Rangers on May 16. The only other player with a split-30/30 season is Carlos Beltrán in 2004 (Royals, Astros).
Before wrapping up this answer, here is the top contender to put up a 30/30 season in 2026 from each of the six teams that have never had one:
| Team | Player | Home Runs | Stolen Bases |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago White Sox | Miguel Vargas | 16 | 9 |
| Detroit Tigers | Kevin McGonigle | 4 | 9 |
| Minnesota Twins | Byron Buxton | 20 | 6 |
| San Diego Padres | Xander Bogaerts | 8 | 9 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | Jordan Walker | 17 | 10 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | Cedric Mullins | 6 | 10 |
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Which teams historically have had the greatest difference (positively or negatively) between cumulative player WAR generated and actual team wins? Is there a common thread among those teams that helps explain why (record in one run games, batting average with RISP, blowouts, etc.)? — Brad
Michael Baumann: That’s an interesting question, Brad, less because I think we’re going to find anything revealing or probative, and more because you’ve given me occasion to make a very large and very fun spreadsheet. (I’m imagining one of those “It Gets Better” PSAs where I go back in time to tell my depressed teenage self that in 25 years I’m going to say “very fun spreadsheet” and mean it.)
Actually, through the custom reports and data exports available to FanGraphs Members, any one of you could do this, too: Get position player and pitcher WAR for each AL/NL team from 1901 to 2025 (a total of 2,706 seasons) and whack it all into one big spreadsheet so you can add them up. Don’t forget that WAR isn’t going to match wins anyway, because a theoretical replacement-level team has a winning percentage of .294. A little math and a few magic words later, and I give you the following:
| Greatest WAR Overperformances | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | Team | Games | Wins | WAR Ex. Wins | Diff. | Run Diff. | Pythag. Wins | Diff. | |
| 2016 | TEX | 162 | 95 | 76.7 | 18.3 | 8 | 81.9 | 13.1 | |
| 2008 | LAA | 162 | 100 | 82.3 | 17.7 | 68 | 88.5 | 11.5 | |
| 2021 | SEA | 162 | 90 | 72.3 | 17.7 | -51 | 75.3 | 14.7 | |
| 2007 | ARI | 162 | 90 | 73.6 | 16.4 | -20 | 78.8 | 11.2 | |
| 1915 | BRO | 154 | 80 | 63.7 | 16.3 | -24 | 72.7 | 7.3 | |
| 1919 | CIN | 140 | 96 | 79.8 | 16.2 | 177 | 94.5 | 1.5 | |
| 2012 | BAL | 162 | 93 | 77.9 | 15.1 | 7 | 81.8 | 11.2 | |
| 1906 | CHC | 154 | 115 | 100.1 | 14.9 | 323 | 116.8 | -1.8 | |
| 2005 | NYY | 162 | 95 | 80.3 | 14.7 | 97 | 90.4 | 4.6 | |
| 1999 | COL | 162 | 72 | 57.3 | 14.7 | -122 | 70.8 | 1.2 | |
| Greatest WAR Underperformances | |||||||||
| Season | Team | Games | Wins | WAR Ex. Wins | Diff. | Run Diff. | Pythag. Wins | Diff. | |
| 1907 | WAS | 154 | 49 | 71.8 | -22.8 | -183 | 52.9 | -3.9 | |
| 1965 | BOS | 162 | 62 | 82.9 | -20.9 | -122 | 67.6 | -5.6 | |
| 1935 | BSN | 153 | 38 | 55.8 | -17.8 | -277 | 47.9 | -9.9 | |
| 1904 | WAS | 157 | 38 | 55.7 | -17.7 | -306 | 38.8 | -0.8 | |
| 1909 | WAS | 156 | 42 | 59.5 | -17.5 | -273 | 38.6 | 3.4 | |
| 1916 | PHA | 154 | 36 | 53.4 | -17.4 | -329 | 38.1 | -2.1 | |
| 1952 | DET | 156 | 50 | 67.2 | -17.2 | -181 | 55.9 | -5.9 | |
| 1991 | BAL | 162 | 67 | 83.9 | -16.9 | -110 | 69.0 | -2.0 | |
| 1991 | CLE | 162 | 57 | 73.2 | -16.2 | -183 | 59.2 | -2.2 | |
| 1917 | PIT | 157 | 51 | 67.0 | -16.0 | -131 | 58.2 | -7.2 | |
I decided to calculate Pythagorean record the instant I sorted this leaderboard and saw the 2016 Rangers and 2007 Diamondbacks in first and fourth place. Because I remember those teams. The 2007 Diamondbacks were the no. 1 overall seed in the National League playoff bracket despite having a minus-20 run differential. (Everyone says they want parity, but it’s less fun than you think.)
The 2016 Rangers were an important team to me personally; that was my first season with a full-time sportswriting job, and I spent a lot of that season arguing with Ben Lindbergh about how good the Rangers actually were. I loved the 2015-16 Rangers, and spent a decent amount of time around them since I was based in Houston at the time. They’d been terrific the year before, when they’d only had half a season of Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish was hurt. Now they had both Hamels and Darvish, plus that one random good Ian Desmond center field season, plus a monster rookie in Nomar Mazara (don’t laugh, he was a big deal back then)… and they got totally throttled in the ALDS rematch with Toronto.
You don’t forget those formative disappointments.
The first four teams on this list had high-quality, or at least higher-quality, defensive data to put into WAR, and in addition to outperforming their WAR by double digits, they outperformed their run differential by double digits. So did the 2012 Orioles, in seventh place. What I take from that: Fluke teams are identifiable by multiple methods.
I also very, very much enjoy the 1919 Reds being here. Not only did they barely beat a team that was trying to lose the World Series, but WAR says they should’ve been a sub-.500 team. (Though run differential disagrees.)
The bottom half of this graph is almost all old teams: Three different versions of the 1900s Washington Senators, five teams from the Deadball era, seven from before the leagues split into divisions, none more recent than 1991. The deviation between real-world wins and Pythagorean wins is also much, much smaller in this group of teams, as you can see.
This might be an anticlimactic answer, but I think WAR is just not that good this far in the past. We don’t even have strikeout and walk rate data until 1915, and how precise can FIP be in a league with no strikeouts and no home runs? Are we going to lose something in translation, comparing the modern game to the small ball of 100 years ago?
Probably. Even now, WAR is a chainsaw, not a scalpel, and when you’re adding up individual players’ contributions, those small imprecisions compound themselves.
Going back up to the top half of the table, the 1906 Cubs won 116 games, overperforming their WAR by 16 games but actually underperforming their run differential by a game. That team had the most famous infield defense in baseball history, and our WAR had Johnny Evers as plus-15.0 runs and Joe Tinker at 29.1. But they had two other tremendous defenders up the middle in catcher Johnny Kling (5.8 runs) and center fielder Jimmy Slagle (also 5.8 runs). I’m happy to believe that WAR missed something there, just because the data wasn’t fit for empirical purpose.
Since I have all this data, I made a little graph of the difference between real wins and WAR wins, plotted against real wins versus Pythagorean wins.
I’ve highlighted four outliers: the 1909 Senators in yellow, the 1908 Cardinals in red, the 1905 Cubs in purple, and the 1909 Cubs in brown. Those four teams all had at least an 18-win difference between what WAR and run differential would’ve predicted, and they all competed before World War I. (The fact that the Cubs not only overperformed but also outscored their WAR so many times in a row only supports the point I made earlier.)
I also spot-checked some of the more modern underperformers for bullpen performance and record in one-run games. The 1965 Red Sox and 1991 Orioles had terrible records in one-run games, but not much worse than they had on the whole. Cleveland in 1991 was actually better in one-run games than in other contests.
I’m coming up on the point where Matt’s going to get mad at me if stretch this answer out much longer, so now is a good time to end. Maybe I’ll revisit this question in the future, since I already did the stat work.
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My perception may be skewed since I am a Reds fan, and the team has already eclipsed their single-season record for allowing bases-loaded walks, but has there been an overall uptick of free passes with the sacks jammed in 2026?
Even when I’m not watching the Reds, it seems like I’ve seen A LOT of runs walked in, but we all know what generalizing from anecdotal material gets you — it makes a Nec out of Dotal, or something like that.
Anyway, hope this merits looking into!
Cheers,
Miles
Ben Clemens: I couldn’t agree with you more, Miles. I feel like I’ve seen more bases-loaded walks this year than in any year in recent memory. That makes sense intuitively – the walk rate has trended down slightly in the last month, but it’s still up massively from 2025, and in my head, the challenge system makes a bases-loaded walk more likely. Umpires might still subconsciously widen the zone as they did before, but now batters can challenge their calls. There’s just one problem with this beautiful story – the numbers don’t bear it out.
So far this year, the league-wide walk rate with the bases loaded is 7.5%. Given that hitters have already batted with the bases loaded more than 2,000 times this year, that’s a lot of walks, 156 to be precise. But that’s only the fourth-highest bases-loaded walk rate of the 21st century. As recently as 2021, batters walked with the bases loaded 8.1% of the time. They also walked 7.8% of the time in 2020 and 7.7% of the time in 2009. Those three years all featured high walk rates, so there’s some correlation here, but 2026 doesn’t appear to be a particular outlier. More walks overall means more bases-loaded walks, basically.
The Reds’ 19 bases-loaded walks are, no doubt, ridiculous. But you’re getting fooled by your own team’s particular ineptitude at this skill. The team with the second-most bases-loaded walks? That’s the Astros with 10. The Reds have walked in as many runs as the second- and third-place clubs combined! Even in 2021, only one team eclipsed 20 bases-loaded walks for the entire season. The Reds are issuing free passes in 18.4% of their bases-loaded plate appearances. Ew!
That 18.4% rate would be a record, and by a lot. Two teams hit 16.7%, but that was in 2020, in an abbreviated season. The previous team with the highest full-season mark in my database is the 2012 Padres, who issued walks 13.4% of the time with the bases loaded. To borrow the old Jeff Sullivan bit, the gap between the 2026 Reds in first and the 2012 Padres in second is as large as the gap between the Padres and the 2009 Marlins in 116th. This isn’t the year of the bases-loaded walk – but it might be the year where the Reds blow the doors off of the record for bases-loaded walks.
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My question relates to how you keep up with the daily highlights, and/or information during the baseball season.
I find it difficult to watch full games daily as I’m based in England. My current strategy is using the FanGraphs scoreboard identifying the most exciting games by utilising the graphs (the bigger spikes late in games win) and then watching the relevant condensed games or recaps on MLB TV.
Am I doing this wrong? Should I be watching more full games? I’m fascinated with the strategic elements of baseball, particularly late in games, and while the condensed highlights do a great job, I feel like I’m missing the intricacies of the sport.
I’m trying to cover as much baseball watching as I can with the time I have, but I’ve always been intrigued as to how many actual full games baseball fans (specifically analytically minded ones) watch.
Thanks!!
Matthew Nuttall
Davy Andrews: This is a great question, Matthew. I definitely struggle with this myself. Before I started writing about baseball, I was just a Nationals fan. I’d watch the Nats most nights, and I’d learn about the rest of the league from Sunday Night Baseball, from SportsCenter, and from reading FanGraphs. I feel pretty confident that’s how most baseball fans work. They watch their favorite team. If they’re really into baseball, they’ll also read about it, watch MLB Network, catch the nationally televised games, and maybe bounce around MLB TV to catch Paul Skenes or Tarik Skubal doing their thing. If they’re super-duper nerds who are interested in the intricacies of the sport, then they haunt FanGraphs.
These days, my baseball-watching habits are much more aligned with yours. It’s my job to know as much as I can about the game, and there are only so many hours in the day, even though I’m in a convenient time zone. I watch a lot of Replay Rundown in the mornings. I try to have the day games on in the background while I’m working. At night, I do my best to pick a game between two teams I haven’t seen recently. (The fact that my favorite team spent the past several years plumbing the depths of unwatchability made that transition easier.) Like you, I try to focus on close games, because that’s when teams will have their higher-leverage players in the game. I want to be familiar with all the players. I want to have a sense of what’s happening with each team.
That said, I do really prefer to watch a whole game, or as large a chunk of one as I can, starting at the beginning. I pay more attention and feel more connected to it when I know the story of the game. I tend to find my mind wandering when I watch MLB’s Big Inning. That’s probably because of how I grew up watching the game, but that’s not how you started watching the game and it sounds like you don’t have this problem. That’s great.
More importantly, I’m here to tell you that you’re not doing it wrong. There’s no way to do it wrong. It’s a game and we watch it for fun, and unless the way you watch baseball is somehow hurting someone, then you’re doing it right. You enjoy the strategy of the game and you want to see the high-leverage moments. Right on. I’m so glad that FanGraphs helps you find them. If you want to try experiencing the game the way the average fan does, maybe pick a favorite team and really try to watch their games for a week or two, see how it treats you. I’d recommend a team with a great television booth like the Mets, Tigers, or Orioles. But this is supposed to be fun. Keep having fun.
* This article was originally published here
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