Here at Fantistics, we get lots of e-mail from subscribers asking for our advice on the typical fantasy issues that arise.... Spot starts, trade proposals, lineup structure, and the value of free agents are the main ones. But last weekend, I got a unique note asking for my advice on spot steals.

I hadn't given it much thought before that e-mail, but there truly is a fundamental strategy of picking up players strictly for speed. The Fantistics subscriber was going into Sunday in a head-to-head league losing by two stolen bases and wanted to give himself a decent shot at winning the category. Typically, the best strategy is to go to the free agent wire, sort the stats by stolen bases, pick the guy at the top and hope for the best.

But there is another component to picking-up speed off the waiver wire that often gets overlooked: The Catcher. Of course, when a runner gets on base, there are many factors that determine if the situation is right for a swipe: a pitcher's move to first, the length of time it takes for a pitcher to deliver the pitch to the plate, the hitter at the plate, the catcher's defensive ability, the game situation, and of course, the runner's skill and speed to steal the base.

So I decided to take a look at catchers with at least 25 starts behind the plate in 2007 to see if their defensive stats varied significantly. I also checked the number of stolen bases per division to make sure there weren't any glaring differences in the number of stolen base attempts in any particular division. Naturally, the AL West, with only four teams, had the fewest SBs, but the number of SB attempts are basically equally across leagues.

Here's a table of SB, by division through Wednesday, May 25^th:

There's a little "chicken or the egg"thing going on here as well. Do runners attempt more steals because they can run on certain catchers within a division? Or are there simply better runners in certain divisions that cause catchers to have low success rates of throwing runners out? Those questions are probably an entirely separate First Pitch, but for argument sake, we'll assume SB attempts normalize to be relatively even throughout the league.

We now take a look at the top 25 catchers mentioned above. Below is a table of these catchers, listed in descending order by the number of attempted stolen bases per inning while behind the plate.

Yes, its a lot of information. And its definitely a little different looking at defensive stats for a change. But the above table gives us an interesting perspective on catchers' ability to stop the running game.

As you can see, Josh Bard leads the league in the number of attempted stolen bases while he's catching with a steal attempt every 6.4 innings. Or, to look at it another way, there are 1.4 steals attempted on Bard for every 9 inning game. On the flip side, Jason Varitek has yielded the least number of steals at 1 SB attempt for every 23.6 innings, or approximately 0.38 attempts for every 9-inning game.

Other guys that haven't had much success in throwing runners out are Jorge Posada, Victor Martinez, Mike Napoli, and Jason Kendall. These five catchers average at least one stolen base attempt per 9-innings caught.

I have focused mostly on the INN/ATT category as a proxy for speed, but caught stealing percentage (CS%) should also be considered. Other than Varitek, who has the best INN/ATT but the worst CS%, Bard leads this list as well with just an 11% CS%. In fact, the other top-5 catchers listed also have mediocre CS%, leading to a compelling story that runners will tend to run on these guys more than other catchers.

So how can you use this information to help "swipe"the steal category in head-to-head leagues? If you go into a Sunday down by steals and you can afford the roster space on a speed guy, look at more than just his SB%. A look at a catcher's propensity to allow the steal can also have a significant affect. You can get this information for free at any of the major sports websites. I sourced this information here at ESPN.com.

You can periodically catch me talking Baseball (yes you can hear me) on MCN's Bases Loaded. For Thursday's segment click here.

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!