Odor Flashes New Base-Stealing Threat

Several baseball talking heads โ€” both locally and nationally โ€” have pegged Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor as one of the leading candidates for a huge, breakout season in 2016.

Odor gave us plenty good reason for the optimism over the second half of the 2015 season when he was one of the best hitting infielders in baseball and was one of the Rangers' shining stars in the postseason.

The one visible wart of his offensive game, however, was his inability to steal bases. As a fast middle infielder, Odor has base-stealing threat written all over him, but he didn't perform like many would expect from someone of his stature and speed.

Entering this season, Odor was only 10-for-24 on steal attempts for his career, showing it takes more than speed (which Odor has) to be a good base-stealer. So he spent all offseason trying to improve his craft, and on Monday, he showed the pay off.

Odor stole second base in the fifth inning after drawing a walk (another part of his game that has been lacking) after getting a great jump on Felix Hernandez and beating the throw from Seattle catcher Chris Ianetta with no problem.

If Odor has indeed gotten more efficient in the running game, that's going to be a huge boost to his overall tool set as it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could steal 20 bases and hit 20 homers.

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