It was not only a bad time in franchise history to lose Jose Reyes, but — sorry in advance Mets fans — a bad time in baseball history.
You know how folks have wanted the pace of major league games quickened? Well, it looks like that is happening.
Not with shorter games, but literally with a style that emphasizes speed.
Toward the end of each spring, I query more than 20 scouts and executives essentially to gauge what they expect for the coming campaign. What surprised me most this year was how many predicted a season of “Gentlemen, start your engines.”
“Keep an eye on it. More teams are going to run more often,” an NL executive said.
Actually, the game slowly has been getting faster in recent years. There were 4,540 steals attempted last season, the most since 1990. There were 1,600 successful steals by AL teams, the most since 2001. There were 1,679 successful steals by NL teams, the most since 1997.
Last year represented the third straight year AL clubs averaged at least 108 successful steals. By comparison, between 2002-06, that average fluctuated between 87 and 91. NL clubs averaged 105 steals last season, the first time over the century mark since 2000.
There were 50 players with 20 steals in 2011 and 20 with 30 steals (including 39 by Reyes), both the highest in a season since 1999.
So why has thievery made a return?
First, we should explain why after the high-flying 1980s, the steal numbers diminished. The oversimplification is because steroids came in abundance in the 1990s and Moneyball thinking arrived in the early 2000s.
In 1996, with, um, more inflated hitters, the major league home run total went over 2,000 for the first time, beating the previous record by almost 300. From 1997-2000, the homer numbers rose every year until it exceeded 3,000 in 2000.
Teams were favoring bigger-bodied players who could get the ball out of the park. Speedsters were going extinct. As statistical analysis took root at the turn of the century, it was demonstrated mathematically that if you were not succeeding at least at a 70- to 75-percent clip on steals that you were helping the defense. In fact, helping more than ever because with the influx of homers, you no longer needed to reach second to be considered in scoring position.
From 2000-04, the success rate on steals in the majors held steady between 68-69 percent. The emphasis became to tax pitchers with long at-bats, draw bases on balls and wait for the home run to fuel big innings. It was walk, don’t run.
What has changed? I would look again at steroids and Moneyball.
You can pick your reasons — from better testing to fear of being outed by a Kirk Radomski-esque rat — but the anecdotal information is that use of illegal performance enhancers is down in recent years, and homers have fallen with it. The 2,281 homers last year were the fewest since 1997.
Now the Moneyball philosophy has been caricatured as strictly about on-base percentage. But, at its core, the ideology is about two elements: 1) Finding what the sport undervalues; and 2) Using the baseball math to unearth advantages.
It essentially is about zigging when others zag. So when the rich teams like the Yankees and Red Sox began to inflate the price for players expert at getting on base, many less financially endowed organizations looked for new horizons and settled on defense. And because, in general, better defensive players tend to be quick, more of them began to push onto rosters and push Jurassic (bulkier/older) players off. Look how, for example, Vlad Guerrero, Hideki Matsui and Magglio Ordonez cannot find jobs.
The combination of better defensive players, more precise defensive positioning (another benefit of computer programs) and better pitching has quashed offense. The average runs per game was 8.57 last year, a 19-year low, and OPS fell for the fifth straight year to .710, the lowest since 1992. One offensive item that has improved from the early 2000s to the late 2000s is stolen base percentage. It has been between 71-74 percent for the last six years.
So fewer players are reaching first (the .319 on-base percentage also was the lowest since 1992) and players are no longer viewed as in scoring position when they get there. Thus, the baseball math is showing that if you are going to steal at a better than 71-percent clip that it is a valuable tool to use again. It essentially is about maximizing fewer scoring opportunities.
No team is using the baseball math better than the low-payroll, high-IQ Rays. They lost their all-time steal leader, Carl Crawford, yet still attempted more steals (217) than any team in 2011 and were successful 71 percent of the time. Then this offseason, seeing the trend in the game, Tampa Bay signed 36-year-old Jose Molina to be its primary catcher, though he never has been the primary starter before in his career and is not much of a hitter. But he has thrown out 40 percent of those trying to steal against him.
Teams such as Tampa Bay search for edges, and if the Rays can hold opponents to a 60-percent success rate stealing while stealing at better than a 70-percent clip themselves, they see a computation that equals a few wins during the year.
The Mets also lost their all-time steal leader, but do not have nearly the speed in Reyes’ absence that Tampa Bay had without Crawford. And the Mets’ loss is the Marlins’ gain. Miami might get 100 steals from its first three hitters — Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio and Hanley Ramirez, especially with go-go manager Ozzie Guillen now in charge.
Meanwhile, the Yankees could look for as many opportunities to have Brett Gardner and Eduardo Nunez playing together as possible.
The Dodgers are leading off Dee Gordon, who could be in a race with Reyes and Boston’s Jacoby Ellsbury to be the first 80-steal man since Vince Coleman and Rickey Henderson in 1988. And though the perception is they are about to become a slugging team with Albert Pujols, the Angels likely will call up elite prospect Mike Trout at some point to join Peter Bourjos in their outfield, giving them two of the fastest players in the sport.
On your mark, get set …
joel.sherman@nypost.com