Last night, Ronald Acuña stole his seventieth base of the 2023 season. In so doing, he became the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to steal at least seventy bases and hit at least forty home runs in the same season. In that simple–and extraordinary– sense, there is no context for Acuña’s 2023. He stands (and hits, and runs, and slides) alone. And, as MLBTR reports, no one else is particularly close: “No player with at least 40 homers in a season had ever stolen as many as 46 bags in the same year before Acuña exponentially raised the bar in 2023.”

Adding some context emphasizes the rare and special nature of this achievement, though, and so has some contributory value. Most immediately, it’s worth noting that Acuña achieved his feat during an era in which base stealing is relatively rare. Yes, new rule changes this year do seem to have triggered a rebound in what many presumed was a lost art, but compare, for a quick example: the 2022 MLB season saw roughly 1,000 fewer bases stolen than in 1990, Rickey Henderson’s MVP season. Even with those leaguewide rule changes, Acuña himself still stole more bases in 2023 than two other teams.

That’s a base-stealing feat Henderson accomplished too. In 1982, his MLB-leading 130 stolen bases bested eleven other clubs, with comparable results throughout the 1980s. That doesn’t diminish the shine on Acuña’s 2023, though; instead, it enhances it.

First, Henderson never hit more than twenty-eight home runs in a season, and he barely approached double-digit bombs in his most larcenous years on the basepaths. Doing both at the same time is what makes Acuña special. (Even the great Mike Trout’s stellar rookie season– 30 HR/49 SB– did not shine quite so brightly by this measure, and he commenced his base stealing opt-out soon after.) Second, anything to do with Henderson and stolen bases commonly was presumed to be untouchable, residing on the same block as batting .400 or hitting safely in fifty-six consecutive games. That Acuña’s 2023 now is a topic of neighborhood conversation there shows just how special it is.