Article: Dave Collins And A Precarious Franchise Record

[Mack Longpre]

When you think of all-time Blue Jays speedsters, Dave Collins isn't likely to be at the front of your mind, but maybe he should be.

The Toronto Blue Jays' single-season record books are littered with all of the legendary Blue Jay names you would expect, and many of these records you likely know offhand.

• Highest Batting Average: .363 (John Olerud – 1993)
• Most Hits: 215 (Vernon Wells – 2003)
• Most Doubles: 57 (Carlos Delgado – 2000)
• Most Home Runs: 54 (José Bautista – 2010)
• Most RBI: 145 (Carlos Delgado – 2003)
• Most Walks: 132 (José Bautista – 2011)
• Most Wins: 22 (Roy Halladay – 2003)
• Lowest ERA: 2.05 (Roger Clemens – 1997)
• Most Strikeouts: 292 (Roger Clemens – 1997)
• Most Saves: 45 (Duane Ward – 1993)

And then there's the Blue Jays' single-season record holder for stolen bases.

• Most Stolen Bases: 60 (Dave Collins – 1984)

You may be forgiven for recognizing neither the name nor the record. Dave Collins is barely a tertiary character in the story of the Toronto Blue Jays, let alone in the long history of baseball. Like most who fill out the rank and file of major league rosters, Collins' impact on the game during his career was minimal. But here we are, forty years hence, and his single-season club record for stolen bases still stands. Through decades of Blue Jay teams featuring notable speedsters like Moseby, Garcia, Alomar, Nixon, Stewart, and Davis, Collins' 1984 (60 SB) remains atop the ledger.

With the recent rule changes around pickoffs and increased base sizes, stolen base rates are on the rise around the game. For the first time in the last couple of decades, Collins' now forty-one-year-old record feels at risk of being surpassed. The Blue Jays may only be one speedster away from creating a new, single-season stolen base record. Someone like Andrés Giménez or Jonatan Clase, given enough playing time, maybe the next to etch their name into the club's record books. Until such time, Collins has been the leader here. So, let's learn more about the man and dive deeper into his contributions to some very good mid-1980s Blue Jays teams.

Collins, a speedy outfielder from South Dakota, was drafted four times in the 1970s. He was drafted by the Reds and Royals in 1971 and 1972, respectively, but did not sign either time. In the 1972 June draft, he finally signed with the Angels as the sixth overall pick. He played parts of two seasons in California before being drafted by the Mariners in the 1976 expansion draft. He played in Seattle for just one year, but he made history as the first batter, first base hit, and first run scored in the history of the Mariners franchise. He was traded to Cincinnati ahead of the 1978 season, and he stayed with the Reds for four years, where he slashed a respectable .293/.358/.371 with 128 stolen bases over 463 games. 1980 proved to be a career year for Collins as he posted a 3.3 bWAR, collected 167 hits, and stole 79 bases over 144 games. He then signed as a free agent with the Yankees for the 1982 season, where he played below his standard in a part-time role.

That offseason, Collins was a part of one of the most important trades in Blue Jays history. He was packaged with Fred McGriff and Mike Morgan and sent to Toronto in exchange for Tom Dodd and Dale Murray. Collins flourished in his two seasons in Toronto, slashing .291/.355/.389 with 91 stolen bases at an 81% success rate. His 1984 campaign was arguably his best season as a big leaguer. That year, he batted .308, logged a 120 OPS+, set the club's stolen base record, led the American League with fifteen triples, and racked up 3.1 bWAR. 1984 was a watershed season for the Blue Jays, as they parlayed their first winning record the previous year into 89 wins (second-most in the American League) and proved to be a legitimate threat to the eventual World Series champion Detroit Tigers. Collins’ invaluable contributions to this excellent team should not be understated.

But the Blue Jays' promising outfield core of Bell, Moseby, and Barfield was emerging as a cornerstone of the franchise, and Collins found himself the odd man out. He and Alfredo Griffin were sent to Oakland after the '84 season for pitcher Bill Caudill. From there, Collins bounced to Detroit, back to Cincinnati, then rounded out his career in 1990 with the Cardinals. After leaving Toronto, he declined precipitously, never again hitting or running as well as he did in 1984.

So, what's the deal with this relatively unknown player holding the top spot on a prestigious franchise leaderboard? Well, across all thirty major league teams, some incredibly niche names hold a good portion of single-season stolen base records. Along with Collins in Toronto, here are nine other single-season stolen base record holders who may surprise even ardent fans of their respective clubs:

• Chicago White Sox: Rudy Law (77 in 1983)
• Minnesota Twins (Washington Senators): Clyde Milan (88 in 1912)
• Texas Rangers: Bump Wills (52 in 1978)
• Houston Astros: Gerald Young (65 in 1988)
• Colorado Rockies: Willy Taveras (68 in 2008)
• Chicago Cubs: Bill Lange (84 in 1896)
• St. Louis Cardinals: Arlie Latham (129 in 1887)
• Cincinnati Reds: Hugh Nicol (138 in 1887)
• Washington Nationals (Montreal Expos): Ron LaFlore (97 in 1980)

Collins' place atop the Blue Jays' leaderboard is not an aberration. Anonymous and largely forgotten, yes, but Collins' record was well-earned. He stole 60 bases on 74 attempts, giving him an efficient 81% stolen base success rate. For context, Rickey Henderson had one of the greatest base-stealing seasons of all time two years earlier, racking up a still modern-day record of 130 stolen bases. In that season, he had a technically inefficient 74.7% success rate. Make no mistake, even in his best years, Dave Collins was not a better base stealer than Rickey, but it's a helpful comparison to understand Collins' contributions to the Jays in 1984.

A more useful comparison we can make is to hold Collins' 1984 season up against the other great base-stealing seasons in Blue Jay franchise history. Using the ten best single-season stolen base totals, let's compare Collins to the rest of the field using the first stolen base success rate:

• 84% Success - Roberto Alomar (49 SB in 1992)
• 83% Success - Roberto Alomar (53 SB in 1991)
• 82% Success - Otis Nixon (47 SB in 1997)
• 81% Success - Dave Collins (60 SB in 1984)
• 81% Success - Otis Nixon (54 SB in 1996)
• 79% Success - Roberto Alomar (55 SB in 1993)
• 79% Success - Damaso Garcia (46 SB in 1984)
• 78% Success - Rajai Davis (46 SB in 2012)
• 74% Success - Shannon Stewart (51 SB in 1998)
• 73% Success - Damaso Garcia (54 SB in 1982)

And now, let's use weighted stolen bases (wSB) (wSB is a statistic that shows how many runs a player contributes to their team through their stolen bases relative to an average player):

• 6.5 wSB - Dave Collins (60 SB in 1984)
• 6.2 wSB - Roberto Alomar (53 SB in 1991)
• 6.1 wSB - Roberto Alomar (49 SB in 1992)
• 4.9 wSB - Roberto Alomar (55 SB in 1993)
• 4.8 wSB - Otis Nixon (54 SB in 1996)
• 4.4 wSB - Otis Nixon (47 SB in 1997) (Nixon ended the 1997 season with 6.7 wSB but was traded to the Dodgers in August)
• 4.4 wSB - Damaso Garcia (46 SB in 1984)
• 3.5 wSB - Rajai Davis (46 SB in 2012)
• 2.9 wSB - Damaso Garcia (54 SB in 1982)
• 2.4 wSB - Shannon Stewart (51 SB in 1998)

A handful of inferences can be gleaned from the above rankings. First, Collins holds the single-season club record for stolen bases by five swipes and did so with an excellent 81% success rate. Though not the highest percentage among the most productive thieves in the Blue Jays record books, his is still in the top five. That top five includes Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar twice and the game's sixteenth most prolific base stealer, Otis Nixon.

Second, perhaps more importantly, he supplied more value to the Blue Jays through his base stealing than anyone else on the list. Collins' 6.5 wSB outranks even Alomar's most productive base-stealing seasons. In fact, in only two seasons with the Blue Jays, Collins' cumulative 9.8 wSB ranks sixth all-time in club history, behind Roberto Alomar (22.1), Devon White (15.7), Lloyd Moseby (15.6), Rajai Davis (12.1), and Otis Nixon (9.9). Among these players, Collins had the fewest plate appearances by a wide margin, and only Otis Nixon made it into fewer games. Looking at Collins' two seasons in Toronto, we can extrapolate an average per-season wSB of 4.9. Using this average, if Collins had played for Toronto as long as Alomar, he would have accrued 24.5 wSB and claimed the top spot in the record book. I know this is crude and faulty logic, but the point must be made that his place on the franchise leaderboard is astonishing, given how much less he played for the Jays than the others on the list.

Stolen base success rate and wSB only tell us about a player's value regarding stolen bases. Dave Collins, a great base stealer, was more generally a valuable base runner. To measure this, we can use base running runs (BsR). (Think of this as WAR, but purely for base running.) Among the ten most prolific base-stealing seasons in club history, Collins' BsR of 6.5 in 1984 still ranks at the top. And in his two seasons with Toronto, he sits 13th on the all-time Blue Jays BsR leaderboard. (Imagine my surprise at seeing ERIC HINSKE at number five on that leaderboard.)

Beyond just his base running, Collins had a nice season at the plate in 1984, posting a 16.32 RE24. (RE24 is a win probability statistic that establishes run expectancy during a plate appearance based on the twenty-four base-out states while crediting batters for stolen bases.) Again, ranked among the Jays' ten best base-stealing seasons, Collins' 1984 RE24 is fourth behind Roberto Alomar's three prime seasons from 1991-1993.

Dave Collins was on some sort of heater in 1984. Outside of that season and his excellent 1980 campaign, Collins' career numbers hovered around the league average for 14 years. How fun is it that a ballplayer with such a short Toronto tenure, largely forgotten by Blue Jays fans, holds a relatively esteemed club record with sixty stolen bases in a season? Whether we know it or not, Collins continues to be the yardstick against which all Blue Jay speedsters will be compared. With new pickoff rules and larger bases, base stealing is having a slight comeback of sorts. It feels more possible now than in the last few decades that a speedy new Jay might come about to challenge Collins' now forty-one-year-old mark. If this proves to be a prescient statement, consider yourself now well-equipped to discuss an overlooked great season from our obscure franchise record holder.

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[Spanky99]

Dave Collins was a joy to watch on the base paths, the excitement down at the mistake by the lake was full of excitement back in the day when he got on base. lol... those $2 Dominion tickets were this kid's dream. 😅

Man, 12 was a stud. ⚾

[Brock Beauchamp]

This was a really fun read, well done!

[Mac]

I'll admit I did not know who held the SB record for the Jays and I wasn't coming up with Dave Collins as an answer before now. Great read!