Dodgers No. 25 prospect Kendall George has been running wild at High-A Great Lakes all season, and he’s not finished yet.
The 20-year-old George, the 36th overall pick in the 2023 Draft, is probably the Minor Leagues’ fastest man. He is certainly asserting himself as one of its top base-stealing threats of the past 20 years.
With four games left in the High-A season and a remarkable 11 steals in his past four games, George entered play Thursday with 97 stolen bases in 110 games, putting the speedy outfielder within striking distance of history. His 97 swipes are already the fifth-highest single-season total by a Minor Leaguer since 2005. Only three players since then have swiped 100 or more in the past 20 years: Billy Hamilton (2011, ’12), Chandler Simpson (2024) and Delino DeShields Jr. (2012).
That means George needs three steals in his last four games to join the heralded 100-steal club, and seven more to match Simpson’s mark of 104 from ’24, which ranks second since ’05. Hamilton stands tall above the field with the all-time mark of 155 in 2012, a figure that might never be touched.
“Going out there and being fearless and understanding that I am capable of doing this was really all I needed,” George told MLB Pipeline in a phone interview. “I just put my head down and kept running.”
Here is George’s stolen base breakdown by month, followed by some context on how wild these numbers are:
April: 10
May: 11
June: 10
July: 27
August: 34
September: 5 (through Sept. 3)
He’s swiped 39 bags in the past 27 games dating back to Aug. 1, at least two in each of his past four games and 11 total in those contests. No one has ever stolen more bases in a four-game span in MLB history, according to Statspass, and there have only been three instances in MLB history of a player stealing multiple bases in four consecutive games. George has taken three, three, two and three bags, respectively, in his past four contests.
Even the 34 he swiped in August alone is otherworldly. The MLB record for steals in a month is 33, by Rickey Henderson, in July 1983. George has stolen three or more bases in 13 games this season — Henderson also holds the MLB record for that, at 12, in 1983. Incredibly, there have only been 12 instances of three or more steals in a game across all of MLB in 2025 — down at High-A, George has 13 of those all by himself.
There have been eight 100+ stolen base seasons in MLB history, the most recent being Vince Coleman’s 109 in 1987. Jose Reyes’ 78 steals in 2007 are the most in a season by a player this century.
As for George, scouts joked he had 90-grade speed coming out of the Texas high school ranks in ’23. But speed alone doesn’t make one a disruptive force on the bases, and George has shown significant development in the art of stealing bags. He went 36-for-48 in 86 games for Single-A Rancho Cucamonga in 2024, his first full pro season, resulting in a less-than-great 75 percent success rate.
He’s improved on that substantially this season, improving his success rate to 80.2 percent in more than twice the number of attempts. All told, George is 97-for-121 in stolen base attempts this season.
“I’ve learned you can’t really run reckless,” George said. “There is technique that goes into it. Even though I am really fast and can get away with some things. This year I’ve been really honing in on that technique, picking spots better, picking counts better and things of that nature. Even though it has improved, I think there is still room for improvement. I’ve been thrown out 20-something times. I could already be at 100. But the strides that I have made this year are kind of positive.”
George will be gunning for history in the midst of a playoff push. Great Lakes entered play Thursday 1/2 game back of Lake County for the final Midwest League playoff spot. Should the Loons qualify, they would play a best-of-three Division Series. But any more steals George racks up in postseason play wouldn’t count toward his regular-season total.
As far as any records are concerned, that gives him a clear finish line to run toward.
“Later on in the season, it got more evident that people are really, really trying to throw me out,” he said. “Any chance they got, getting picked over three times, giving me free bases, whatnot. They were doing anything they can to make it as hard as possible for me to steal bases. But it’s fun when it gets challenging like that, finding ways to overcome.”
