The MLB's 300-300 club: Why Guardians 3B José Ramírez could be the next to join

Jose Ramirez stole second base on Thursday night against the Twins, helping the Guardians to a 4-3 victory over their division rivals. This bit of thievery was noteworthy for more than being the precursor to an extra-innings walk-off hit, however: it was the 250th steal of Ramírez’s career, which made him the 24th player in history to steal at least 250 bases and hit 250 home runs. 

He’s the first Guardians player to even accomplish the feat, as well. Part of the rarity of the accomplishment is that extreme power/speed combinations don’t come around all that regularly. You get some power hitters with some decent speed for someone with their pop — Willie Mays hit 660 homers and stole 338 bases, for instance — or speedsters with some power relative to their base-thieving peers like Rickey Henderson (a record 1,406 steals with 297 homers), but someone who can steal bases as regularly as they hit homers, and they do both of those things in high numbers for years and years? It shouldn’t be a surprise that Ramírez is just No. 24 on the list, and that not every team has their own rep yet.

Consider, too, that some players stop stealing as often as they age, or end up growing into their power to the degree that there aren’t as many opportunities for steals, anyway. And don’t discount that the game itself changes over time: stolen bases had all but vanished in MLB compared to some previous steal-happy eras, before recent rule changes brought them back into style, granting us seasons like Ronald Acu?a’s 2023, in which he hit 41 homers and stole a league-leading 73 bases.  

That just 24 players have reached the 250/250 threshold speaks to the challenges in amassing this many homers and steals. Getting beyond this round number to the next one, though, is significantly tougher: just eight players have ever reached 300 steals and 300 homers for their career.

Here are those eight, ranked by their career stolen base totals:

MLB players with 300 steals 300 home runs

1. Barry Bonds (1986-2007): 514 SB, 762 HR
2. Bobby Bonds (1968-1981): 461 SB, 332 HR
3. Willie Mays (1948-1973): 338 SB, 660 HR
4. Alex Rodriguez (1994-2016): 329 SB, 696 HR
5. Steve Finley (1989-2007): 320 SB, 304 HR
6. Andrew Dawson (1976-1996): 314 SB, 438 HR
7. Carlos Beltrán (1998-2017): 312 SB, 435 HR
8. Reggie Sanders (1991-2007): 304 SB, 305 HR

Now that’s a list. Willie Mays is an all-time great, inner-circle Hall of Famer. Andrew Dawson was inducted into Cooperstown in 2010. Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez very well could end up with their own bronze plaques, eventually, even if not through the BBWAA, and Carlos Beltran is a candidate, as well. Barry Bonds’ dad, Bobby, had a heck of a career of his own — it can get lost in his son’s accomplishments, but Bobby Bonds hit .271/.356/.478 over a 12-year stretch from age 22 through 33 — as did Steve Finley and Reggie Sanders. If Ramírez could become the ninth player in this exclusive club, that would be something to brag about.

And he very easily could. Nothing in baseball is a given, of course, but Ramírez is 32 years old, and won’t turn 33 until mid-September. In 2024, he stole a career-high 41 bases, and smacked 39 dingers, tying another career-high set back in 2018. He could very well join the 300/300 club in 2026, maybe even early in the season if this year goes anything close to last year.

How far could Ramírez go, though? Check that list again: just two of the players on it, Barry and Bobby Bonds, managed to get over 350 steals in their career. Only Barry Bonds, though, made it to 350/350… and then 400/400, and finally, 500/500, a level he reached very late in his career, in 2003, a season in which he stole just seven bases. A player with Ramírez’s power and speed still firing on all cylinders this late into their career is the kind of thing that just never happens. The length of the careers of the players on that list were included for a reason: so you could see just how long it took to compile those numbers and make it to the exclusive 300/300 arena. Ramirez is 40 homers and 50 steals short of it, at age 32, a year off of missing a 40/40 campaign by a single home run. He would have been just the seventh player to log a 40/40 campaign, too, so the fact he got that close this late into his career tells you a lot about his chances.

The steals will eventually slow down for Ramírez, but whether it will be in a few years as he approaches 350 for his career, or as he comes up on 400, is tougher to guess at. He can metaphorically crawl over the finish line to 400 someday, as Bonds did 500, or he could still be running full-speed at that point. It’s difficult to gauge for a couple of reasons, namely how he’ll age and how his legs will hold up, as well as the fact that, given the beginning of Ramírez’s career was played in an environment far less friendly to even the idea of attempting to steal, we can’t necessarily project forward with confidence using those figures.

What we do know is that Ramírez is in rare company, and with few players trailing behind him to perform in a similar fashion. There are five active players with at least 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases: Andrew McCutchen (322 homers, 220 steals), Jose Altuve (233, 318), Mike Trout (387, 214), and Christian Yelich (209, 211) the others besides Ramírez. McCutchen is 39, and not running nor hitting like he used to in his prime. Altuve’s days of swiping dozens of bags per year are well behind him, but 300/300 isn’t out of the question so long as his power sticks for a few more years. Trout’s legs and back are a medical disaster at this point, and Yelich’s home run totals are buoyed by two uncharacteristic seasons that account for nearly 40% of the homers he’s hit in his 13-year career.

Shohei Ohtani isn’t there yet, but he is a darkhorse candidate after jumping from 20 steals to 59 in 2024 — a season which saw him become the first-ever 50/50 player — and he’s already swiped nine bases this year. He might not be as aggressive on the basepaths once he’s back to pitching, though — his previous career-high was 26 — so even the seemingly limitless Ohtani isn’t a lock to reach the same heights as Ramírez. The aforementioned Acu?a is at 165 home runs and 196 steals, but given he’s recovering from a second ACL surgery, and has also led the league in caught stealings twice, it’s difficult to say how far his combination of talents will last, as well. Mookie Betts has 275 homers, but just 190 steals, as he cut back from his career-high with the Red Sox in 2019 to average just 13 per season since – 300/300 isn't impossible for him, but beyond that would require a complete change in playstyle. 

All of this suggests that Ramírez has the chance to do something even more special than he’s already managed, which had already put him in elite company. Who knows how long it will take to get there, but Ramírez, unlike so many others past and present, might actually be able to go where no one besides Barry Bonds has gone before. 

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