Drafters go in with a game plan: target your aces, your big boppers, a sprinkle of average, and tend to forget about stolen bases. Once you realize you’ve punted the category completely, you find yourself scrambling to try and make up for it towards the tail end of your drafts. The importance of making sure you can successfully accumulate all of the categories depends on your scoring style. In Head-to-Head leagues, steals aren’t as valuable as they are in roto leagues. Making sure you draft a couple of players with stolen base potential can be the separator in whether you are near the top of your league or find yourself in that awkward middle spot. 

Stolen bases have to be the most difficult category to fill. As there is every year, a late-round flier you took has the potential to accumulate 10+ stolen bases for your team. An ideal approach would be starting your draft off with as many five-category players as possible. The caveat to that is there aren’t many of those left after the first few rounds. Your league format will play a huge factor in how drafts take shape.

Grabbing the most bang for your buck is the ultimate goal. Value is huge when it comes to building a contender. In this article, I have highlighted some of those players that can provide you good value when it comes to making sure you accumulate your steals throughout the season, without sacrificing much else.

ADP using FantasyPros Consensus ADP

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Robbie Grossman (OF – DET): ADP 182.3
2022 Projected Stolen Bases – 16

In what should be a much-improved offense in the 2022 season, Robbie Grossman is going to find himself at the top of the lineup more often than not. A career .352 OBP player will find himself in more situations to run. Another big thing to consider is that the Tigers are known for being one of the more aggressive teams on the base path.

Stealing a career-best 20 bags in 2021 attributed mostly to the fact that he played in a career-high 156 games. Seeing that he is going in the middle-to-late rounds of NFBC drafts, taking him near pick 200 comes at an extreme value that does not require you to sacrifice much in terms of other categories.

Harrison Bader (OF – STL): ADP 258.3
2022 Projected Stolen Bases – 13

It can be debated that Harrison Bader is one of the more underappreciated players in baseball. Many know him for his gold glove caliber plays in centerfield or the long blonde hair protruding from his red baseball cap. What they tend to forget is that he is a key part of the Cardinals’ offense and their success going forward.

Bader continuously goes on these stretches that create so much optimism for him to become one of the best center fielders in all of baseball. His combination of power and speed leave so much more to be desired. The value comes right there. To find a player, near the mid-200s, that can give you 15+ home runs and stolen bases is what this article is all about!

While he has never eclipsed more than 15 stolen bases at the major league level, he is undoubtedly a threat on the base path. Drafting Bader in this area can be one of the more valuable picks in your entire draft should he be able to hold up for the entire season.

Lane Thomas (OF – WSH): ADP 291.3
2022 Projected Stolen Bases – 11

Thomas started the 2021 season rough, to put it nicely. He slashed .104/.259/.125 in 32 games with St. Louis before he was sent back down to AAA and ultimately traded over to Washington in a deal that landed the Cardinals Jon Lester. Once he was able to get consistent at-bats, he was able to put up a slash line of .304/.407/.457 with five doubles, a triple, and eight walks in just 14 games. Even though you cannot directly correlate stolen bases with sprint speed, Thomas did rank in the 93rd percentile in all of baseball last season.

Even though the Nationals lineup isn’t comparable to some of the others in the league, they still have plenty of capable bats at the top that will drive in a lot of runs. Lane Thomas will likely find himself leading off for the Nats in 2022 and will look to use his speed to get into scoring position for a team that will need to manufacture ways to score runs this season.

Bradley Zimmer (OF – CLE): ADP 468.3
2022 Projected Stolen Bases – 14

Just look at that ADP and tell me this is not a value that does not need a lot of explanation.

As Zimmer was making his way through the Guardians’ organization, there wasn’t as much hype surrounding him as you would’ve expected. Many have soured on him over the fact that he has not been able to consistently produce for the team. However, what he does possess is a lot of upside when it comes to stolen bases. 

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