The shop player could be related to financials - if you have no money available, then the AI teams may not be able to match financials properly. There could be other reasons, but I find most of the time, that's the likely cause.
As for stealing, as Lukas said it's correct. Especially with modern settings, even a guy like Dee Gordon only tries to steal a base ~1/3 of the time or so he's on 1B, so it could be you just ran into a bad string of chances. Maybe he's just a little jittery this week and doesn't want to chance it
