Identifying the Most Aggressive Base Stealers of All Time

When thinking of the greatest base stealers of all time, two metrics really come to mind: who stole the most bases and at what success rate. On volume alone, Rickey Henderson is the greatest base stealer of all time; I won’t refute that considering he stole close to 500 more bases than anybody else ever did. When we look at the ultra-high volume steal guys, Tim Raines (808 steals, 85% success rate) gets an argument for his gap in success rate compared to Henderson (81%). Of anybody who attempted 300+ stolen bases, Raines is third all time. Only Carlos Beltran (312 steals, 86%) and Trea Turner (332 steals as of 8/3/2026, 86%) were more efficient, albeit at a much lower volume.

Something else to consider is how many opportunities that runner has to steal. As they say, you can’t steal first base. Rickey Henderson stole his 1,406 stolen bases in 7,414 opportunities, thanks to a .401 career on base percentage in a 25-year career. Billy Hamilton stole 326 in 1,482 opportunities; his 11-year career came with just a .292 OBP. Maybe Hamilton could have gone down as an all-time great if he had more opportunities? Henderson attempted a steal of second or third base in 23% of all his opportunities, while Hamilton tried 27% of the time.

For this article, I gathered all play-by-play data from Retrosheet through 2025. A baserunning opportunity was defined as any play where a player was on base and the next base was open. For example, a runner on first with second base open or a runner on second base with third base open. If a player got on first base to lead off an inning, and the next three batters made outs, that would go down as three total opportunities to steal second base. I went back-and-forth on the right way to define an opportunity and if each time on base should be an opportunity instead of each play, and ultimately I decided it made sense that it should be each play. Baseball’s pickoff/disengagement rules in recent years reset with each play, so it only made sense to me.

Let’s look at the most aggressive stealers of second base and third base of all time. I’m filtering to players who had at least 400 opportunities to steal those bases, a number low enough to allow for some fun names from guys with short careers. By far the top guy for second base is Omar Moreno, an especially fun name considering he was the “Name That Yankee” on the Yankees broadcast a couple weeks ago, and I wasn’t really familiar with him prior to this. Moreno stole 343 stolen bases from 1978 to 1982, with a high of 96 in 1980, but was also caught 116 times (75% success rate).

Looking at third base, we see a lot of the same names, and it’s not surprising to see that the top attempt rates are much lower than second base; it’s much riskier getting thrown out at third when already in scoring position. Only ten guys ever attempted to steal third in 10% or more of their opportunities.

Looking at overall attempt rate of both second and third base, we can crown Vince Coleman as the most aggressive base stealer of all time.

For the most aggressive seasons of all time, Henderson’s record-setting 120 stolen base season surprisingly isn’t number 1. 1986 Eric Davis is the winner here from his career-high 80 stolen base season. The previously mentioned 1980 season from Omar Moreno shows up again. The kicker here is that Moreno shockingly attempted to steal second base 70% of the time in 1980. It’s also interesting that Moreno wasn’t aggressive at all in steal third base and only attempted it 5% of the time. A similar case can be seen in Lou Brock’s second-greatest-of-all-time 118 stolen base season. He attempted to steal second 67% of the time and third only 4% of the time.