Base Stealer Minutia

Everyone knows that Rickey Henderson is tops in career stolen bases with 1406, 468 more than the man he passed, Lou Brock, now in 2nd place. But who is the top percentage stealer of all-time? "Caught stealing" became an official stat only in more recent times, but from what I know, the old-timers like Ty Cobb weren't the best percentage-wise. So here's the list (based on top 100 all-time in steals, or 340+):

84.7% Tim Raines (8o8 steals out of 954 attempts)
84.1% Eric Davis (349 of 415)
83.3% Willie Wilson (668 of 802)
83.11 Barry Larkin (379 of 456)
83.07 Tony Womack (363 of 437)
83.0 Davey Lopes (557 of 671)

Lopes would have been the all-time leader in his day (1970's+), as the ones now ahead of him came later. BTW, Eric Davis would be the all-time leader had he retired a little earlier. He was successful on only 14 of his last 26 steal attempts; subtract those, and he would have been at 86.1% (335 of 389).

How about the worst base stealers, percentage-wise? Again, based on 340+ career steals:

65.3% Rod Carew (353 of 540)
68.5 Brett Butler (558 of 815)
70.9 Billy North (395 of 557)
71.2 Omar Vizquel (369 of 518, as of yesterday)
71.4 Steve Sax (444 of 622)

A surprise to see hall-of-famer Carew as the worst--guess he should have stuck more to hitting! Lou Brock, I believe, said you had to make it at least 2/3's of the time to call it base-stealing--otherwise it was called "gambling."

And how about this for an arcane statistic: lowest number of games per stolen base. Eliminating those who played before 1900, when stolen bases were given out liberally, here's the list:

1.82 Vince Coleman (1371 g, 752 SB)
2.19 R. Henderson (3081, 1406)
2.42 Ron LeFlore (1099, 455)
2.76 Otis Nixon (1709, 620)
2.79 Lou Brock (2616, 938)
2.84 Omar Moreno (1382, 487)
2.87 Bob Bescher (1228, 428)
2.96 Billy North (1169, 395)

It helps to retire early, like Coleman did, to make this list. On the other hand, Henderson played well into his 40's, and still ranks 2nd! Bescher is the only old-timer on the list, from the pre-longball days. And North is the only one among the best here, and among the worst in percentages. That means he was doing a lot of running; also, he wasn't that good at getting on base, so when he did, he rarely stayed put!