For a sport with so much standing around, baseball has more than its fair share of sayings about speed.
Speed kills. Speed never slumps. Speed plays in every ballpark. These adages refer to guys like Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock and Tim Raines, players who could swipe bags at will and create chaos on the basepaths.
The cliches are not used to describe someone like Devon Travis because he’s not much of a larcenist. Base stealing is the most obvious application of speed available in the sport and he has stolen six bases at the major-league level. However, there’s more than one way for a player to create value with his legs on a baseball diamond and Travis has done so in all three facets of the game.
While he isn’t much of a thief, the 25-year-old is a very strong base runner. According to FanGraphs, his efforts in that area have been worth +2.1 runs, the best total on the Blue Jays and tied with players like Christian Yelich, Peter Bourjos and Delino DeShields Jr.
The reason he’s been a positive contributor on the bases is because he pushes the envelope. In his career, Travis has taken the extra bases 55 percent of the time, compared to a league average of 40 percent. He’s consistently going first to third on singles and first to home on doubles. The sample is small, but Travis is also 15-for-17 when it comes to scoring from second base on singles. He is not a station-to-station player.
Perhaps his most memorable moment of aggressive base running came when he sprinted home on a wild pitch to secure a walk-off win for the Blue Jays in July.
Because the ball did not get far from catcher Derek Norris, and he made a good flip to Paul Clemens, the play was fairly close. Edwin Encarnacion initially signaled for Travis to hold, but he was already on his way having made a game-winning decision.
Travis doesn’t just use his quickness while on base, it also comes in handy out of the batter’s box. The second baseman has legged out infield hits at a 10.2 percent clip in 2015 and 9.9 percent in 2016-well above the MLB average of 6.3 percent. There’s certainly some luck involved when it comes to infield hits, but the fact he’s been so far above the average for two straight years while running out of the right-handed batter’s box, speaks volumes.
His speed out of the box has also made him a tough man to double up. Travis has only hit into a double play on eight percent of his chances compared to the league-wide average of 11 percent. That number is also inflated by his series in Baltimore where he was doubled up twice in three games, the same number of GIDP he recorded in his previous 71 contests.
While a solid set of wheels can help a team offensively, it can be even more important on the defensive side of the ball, where Travis’s range has been very solid despite early-career concerns.
In 1136.1 innings in the field, approximately the equivalent of a full season, his range has been worth +4.2 runs by UZR. Blue Jays fans used to the wizardry of Ryan Goins may not appreciate it, but Travis gets to significantly more balls than the average second baseman.
He’s been particularly strong moving to his left as he showed this season with a remarkable play against Jason Castro of the Houston Astros.
There’s some fine glovework there, but without his plus quickness, Travis would have been diving for air.
His range also helps him make plays on tough popups like he did on Wednesday night to take a bloop single away from Mark Trumbo.
Travis is never going to electrify a stadium whenever he gets on base like Billy Hamilton does, or Dalton Pompey did during the Blue Jays’ 2015 playoff run. He doesn’t have the top gear to be that guy.
What he does have is the ability to make his legs work for him. With quickness, hustle and smarts he’s turned himself into a strong base runner, a solid fielder and even gotten himself some more base hits.
Travis may not have the kind of speed that kills, but he’ll inflict a little pain. He’ll steal a hit from you here, score on a shallow sac fly there and beat out a double play to keep a crucial inning alive. It might not be glamorous, but it certainly plays in every ballpark.