The Cubs haven't been a stolen base team over the last few decades.
They haven't consistently been in the top half of the league in stolen bases since some of the Frey and Zimmer coached teams of the 80s. In the 27 seasons since 1990, the Cubs have been in the top half of the league in stolen bases exactly three times. In 2006, Dusty Baker's last year of managing when Juan Pierre swiped 58, the team ranked 6th in the league. In 2008, the division winners just eked into the top half of the league, ranked 8th. In 2015, Joe Maddon's first year, no one had more than 20, but enough people ran to rank the team 6th in stolen bases.
Generally in every other year since 1990, the Cubs haven't just been in the bottom half of the league, but ranking 11th or lower among the National League teams 17 times in 27 seasons and every year except 2015 since 2009. That probably made sense in the years up to the Theo years, since the Cubs were notorious for failing to develop young position players and relying on older free agents.
It's been curious since Theo took over however since generally, even during the rebuilding phase, the Cubs were young, athletic, and an otherwise good baserunning team - taking the extra base, tagging up well, not getting picked off, sliding well, etc. They just didn't steal bases. Some of that can be chalked up to the Sabermetric aversion to risk. (The famous scene with Billy Beane throwing the chair after a successful stolen base in Money Ball comes to mind.) But with more and more teams adapting that style of play and stolen bases around the league going down, it would seem like the Cubs teams should float back up to average or better.
Maybe that's starting to happen this year. The Cubs are 7th in SBs in the NL this year. Javy Baez has notably seemed to have been given the green light. He's 1 SB away from tying his career high with 99 games left to be played on the season.
