Do Not Chew Your Stolen Bases

One of the problems faced by Luddites and other haters of Sabermetrics is that they are forced to fight gun battles with knives. The numbers crunchers speak in the language of research, data and measurable results. Cement heads talk about tradition, unwritten rules and a hatred of math.

Keith Hernandez is not a Luddite or a hater of Sabermetrics. In fact, he's one-third of the best local TV broadcast team in the Majors. Along with Gary Cohen and Ron Darling, Hernandez provides more insight in one inning than in an entire week's worth of White Sox telecasts.

But even Hernandez is susceptible to misrepresenting the basics of new analysis. On a recent broadcast, Hernandez claimed that Sabermetrics eschews the stolen base.

Sabermetricians doesn't eschew stolen bases. They don't chew them and they don't es them. They don't cashew stolen bases. Or almond or peanut them. Seamheads don't apply any nut or legume to stolen bases. If you can count, you love stolen bases as much the innumerate fan.

Stolen bases are good. They take runners from first and put them on second. Yay.

On average, teams score .941 runs when they start an inning with a runner on first and none out. With that runner instead on second, they score 1.17 runs. That's an extra run every fifth game. If your opponent offers you an extra run every fifth game, take it.

What Sabermetrics doesn't like is getting thrown out trying to steal. Outs are bad. Far worse than advancing a base is good. In fact, research (no! not that!) shows that getting thrown out attempting to steal offsets slightly more than two successful thefts. 

If that same runner gets nailed instead, his team's run expectancy that inning drops from .941 to .291. He costs his team two-thirds of a run. Not only is he no longer on base, but his team forgoes a precious out. They only get 27 of them.

Which is why stat guys look at steals with a jaundiced eye. The year Ty Cobb set the steals record with 96, he ran into 38 outs. His baserunning, for all the added bases he took, was worth all of two runs. Rickey Henderson is the current record holder with 130 steals in 1982. He was cut down 42 times. He netted his team about nine runs.

Those are commendable, but hardly worthy of a record. For most of my youth, Maury Wills was the steal king. In his 104-steal season of 1962, he was caught just 13 times, a net benefit to his team of 22 runs. So although Henderson broke his record, it came at a stiff price. For his extra 26 steals, Henderson got thrown out 29 times, a miserable tradeoff.

Henderson is the single season base thief god, but Tim Raines was more valuable stealing bases for six consecutive seasons -- in which he swiped 454 of 513 -- than Henderson was in his record-breaking year. (To be fair, Rickey had six better seasons on the basepaths too, including the following year, when he stole 108 of 127. Absent his 1982 season, that would stand as the record without the caveat.)

So Sabermetricians are being rational when they look askance at SB numbers without knowing the CS numbers too. Of course, being rational is another thing they do that annoys Luddites.

Rod Barajas's Career Thrown Out

Since the Pirates cut him in the off-season, veteran backstop Rod Barajas has been seeking employment. He might want to check the classifieds.

At 250 pounds, Barajas's best production at the plate currently involves the dinner table. He hit just .206/.283/.343 in 104 games last year, but that's probably not what's keeping him from finding MLB work. Barajas has pounded 16+ homers four times and slugged .400+ most of his 13-year career.

The problem with hiring Rod Barajas to be your team's catcher, or back-up catcher, or seventh string catcher, is his catching. Or more accurately, his throwing. 

Last season, Rod Barajas threw out six baserunners attempting to steal. The other 93 were successful.

That's right, 15 out of every 16 would-be base stealers . . . did. 

No one ever accused Barajas of illegal possession of a firearm when he squatted. Even in his prime, no one confused him with Ivan Rodriguez and his 50% caught stealing percentage, though he has a lifetime 31% caught stealing rate, which is about league-average. And some of the trouble might be an inability of Pirate hurlers to hold runners.

Nonetheless, a six percent throw out rate is historically bad. Worst since 1956. And if you want to blame the Pittsburgh pitchers for throwing slow and sloppy, credit them for two of Barajas's six caught stealings. Twice Pirate pitchers picked off the base runner while Barajas was behind the plate, accruing a CS in his column.

Now if you accept the premise that in the current run-scoring environment a stolen base is worth on average about .3 runs and a caught stealing is worth about .7 runs, then runners gained about 24 runs, or about three wins, by the commission of thievery against Pirate pitchers on those occasions when the big Californian was their battery mate. 

If a replacement level backstop nails a third of the runners, they gain, in the aggregate, nothing.

Which means Rod Barajas cost his team three losses compared to a replacement receiver simply on that one aspect of the game. He might be the best handler of pitchers, caller of pitches and framer of strike zones in the long, storied history of baseball. He might sell programs before the game, help the grounds crew pull out the tarp during rain delays and entertain fans between innings. But he's still not overcoming 93 of 99 stolen bases. 

Considering he's a jalopy on the basepaths, a nearly automatic out with the bat and of lengthening tooth, it's easy to see why his big league days may have withered.

To console him, he's got the memory of 1000 games behind the plate, 136 lifetime homers, an '01 Diamondbacks World Series ring and $19 million in career earnings. 

Thanks for playing Rod and enjoy your consolation prize. Just be careful it doesn't get stolen!