Printer-friendly

January 11, 2007

Schrodinger's Bat

It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

by Dan Fox

"The most entertaining ball is one that's aggressive on the base paths. It's a funny thing: Running brings your team together – and also brings the crowd to its feet."

- Davey Lopes

Back in September in this space I explored the components of baserunning. Along with a breakdown of how teams performed from 2000-2005, that analysis looked at how each component contributed to the whole and where baserunning fit into the big picture. In total magnitude, baserunning probably accounts for somewhere a shade under 15% of total offensive output. Within that 15%, advancing on hits (measured by EqHAR) accounts for 50% of that while advancing on fly balls takes a slightly larger share (EqAAR, 27%) of the remaining pie than does advancing on ground outs (EqGAR, 20%). Stolen bases, caught stealing, and pickoffs (EqSBR), have an overall negative value and so do not represent any of the pie.

This week we'll update that piece by looking at the team results from 2006 and then move on to breaking down the metrics by position in an attempt to investigate differences between the leagues.

It's a Team Game