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August 18, 2005

Lies, Damned Lies

Running down SOB

by Nate Silver

Reader Mike Mitchell writes:

Watching Jose Reyes in Fox's Mets/Cubs Flat Earth Society Game of the Week, I couldn't help but wonder if modern sabermetrics does a fair job accounting for low-OBP, high-speed players like Reyes, who score in a higher percentage of their times on base than slower players....

Is it possible the next five years could bring a new statistic, call it Speed-adjusted OB% (fittingly, SOB), that would take Jose Reyes's .304 OBP, factor in his ability to turn his baserunning speed/saavy (other than mere base stealing success) into additional runs for the Mets offense, and come up with a speed-adjusted .329 SOB, meaning he contributes the same run-scoring ability to the Mets offense as an average baserunner with a .329 OBP?

A lot of times you'll hear the case made that OBP undervalues a player like Jose Reyes or Carl Crawford because it doesn't account for their baserunning ability. This is a perfectly reasonable argument. Getting on base, as Mike intimates, is not the goal. Rather, getting on base is a means to an end, that end being scoring runs. But running the bases well is also a means to that end. If Bill Mueller gets on base five percent more often than Scott Podsednik, but Podsednik scores 10 percent more often than Mueller those times that he does reach base, which player is the more valuable run-generator?

Actually, this question isn't as straightforward as it might seem. Much of the value in reaching base is really in avoiding outs. Stealing second base once you've reached first, or scoring from second on a double when a slower runner might have held up: these are valuable skills. But they aren't as important as reaching base in the first place, which not only puts a runner on base for the team to work with, but also preserves one of its irreplaceable 27 outs.