Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #21: 4/21 vs. Padres

So far this season, Gabriel Moreno has thrown out five of eight attempts to steal a base against him. That’s a startlingly low 63% kill rate. J.T. Realmuto is the only catcher in the majors with more CS (6), but he has also allowed a lot more, giving him only a 32% success rate. Moreno’s is the best kill percentage of any catcher with more than six attempts against him. Last year, nobody reached even 50%, with the same six attempt minimum. We’ll see whether this is something which sustains going forward. Even in the new, enhanced environment for stealing bases, opponents may think twice about running on Moreno. For now, please enjoy this super-cut of his five victims to date.

It’s interesting that the first two of these runners were initially called safe, but the decision was then over-turned on an appeal from Torey Lovullo. He has been pretty successful so far: his four over-turned calls in total is only behind Gabe Kapler of the Giants (5), and Lovullo has lost only two appeals to date. If I remember correctly, one of those was late in the game and was one of those “Why not? Worth a shot” appeals. The overall success rate of appeals this year is 40.2%, which is actually significantly down from the 49.0% rate last year, and would be the lowest success rate since the system came in, for the 2014 season. Again, something to keep an eye on as we get deeper into the season.