I looked around for videos of these two stolen bases and couldn’t find any. Luckily, it’s the fact that these happened at all that’s so wonderful. From You Can’t Predict Baseball’s Twitter feed:
Victor Martinez stole a base. That’s his second of the year, and it represents a new career high.
— YCPB (@cantpredictball) May 14, 2014
Raul Ibañez SB
— YCPB (@cantpredictball) May 14, 2014
You Can’t Predict Baseball hits on something great in the sport. While analytics become more and more precise in breaking down every aspect of baseball, the seemingly random and unexpected still happens.
Why would these be unexpected? For Martinez, it’s because the 35 year old former catcher has been almost exclusively a designated hitter since missing the entire 2012 season. A friend said of today’s steal, “How did Victor Martinez do that without any knees? Ya gotta have knees!” Which is true of base stealing.
For Ibanez, it’s because logic says a 41 year old man shouldn’t be stealing bases. Logic also says that of a man who’s on-field performance earned him a dedicated section at Lookout Landing for fuck-up .gifs Logic is neutral when it comes to the fact his surprising success at hitting home runs last year may have been due to a magic practice bat.