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January 17, 2008

Schrodinger's Bat

For the Sake of Completeness

by Dan Fox

"I don't really like to run, and that's why I didn't go out for track in high school. I ain't no fool, I see those dudes running around a track for a living. I wouldn't want to run against them. I wouldn't want to embarrass myself."
--Willie Wilson

Since this column started back in March of 2006, I've spent a good deal of time on the topic of baserunning. Those efforts have resulted in the creation of five metrics under a common methodology that, when combined, can give us a fairly complete picture of the contributions that runners make on the bases. For readers new to BP--or those simply wishing to get an overview of the framework as a whole--you'll be happy to know that an essay titled "The Tortoise, the Hare, and Juan Pierre: Translating Baserunning into Runs" describing the system, along with the totals for all major and minor league players from 2005 through 2007, will be included in Baseball Prospectus 2008 (so make sure and get yours pre-ordered today).

Besides preparing the essay for BP2K8, the topic has been on my mind recently because of the discussion surrounding Tim Raines' first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame. Raines doesn't have gaudy statistical Hall credentials such as 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, or 1,500 RBI, nor was he ever that undefinable but apparently now oh-so-important "most feared hitter in the game." But there's no doubt that just below Ricky Henderson, Raines was at the very top of the list in terms of leadoff hitters in the history of baseball. As a result, some of the focus on Raines rightly centered on his baserunning exploits. Dan Rosenheck of the New York Times took up the topic last week and, using the numbers from my baserunning metrics, made the point that in the running 80s the top runners--like Raines--had the talent to contribute over ten runs per year, while those today are three or four runs short of that. In fact, the league leaders from 1982 through 1989 (which includes talent plus variance due to luck) averaged +13.2 total runs on the bases (EqBRR), while from 2000 through 2007 the average has been +10.0 runs. That difference has to do with the greater number of stolen base opportunities that then generate high EqSBR values when accompanied by high success rates, as in the case of Raines. So how much was Raines worth on the bases?

In a post on my blog, I total it up for his career (minus 1999) and come up with a total of 102.5 career EqBRR for Raines. That actually ranks him third behind Willie Wilson at 109.6 (in the blog post I had Willie at 108.7 but was missing the data for 1977, when he contributed just under another run) and Rickey Henderson at 107.1. Of the three, Raines had by far the most value tied up in EqSBR (65 percent, with a value of +66.5 runs due to his 84.7 percent stolen base percentage, which, somewhat paradoxically, probably indicates that perhaps he didn't run enough) while Henderson was more well-rounded and did better on advancing on hits (+31.2 in EqHAR) and other advancement (+14.6 in EqOAR). Wilson was somewhere in the middle, and did well both in EqSBR at +56.9 and EqHAR at +26.5. As we'll see shortly, those three remain head and shoulders above the rest of the pack, with the next highest totals below 80 runs.

Raines received just 24.3 percent of the vote, a total the writers should feel embarrassed about, especially when you consider that Jim Rice received 72.2 percent on his way to an all but certain election next year. But despite the disappointment, the queries from Rosenheck prompted me to do something I had put on the back burner for many months: running the baserunning framework using all of the Retrosheet data available going back to 1956. Today, we'll examine those results, and in the future, yes, plans are in the works to publish these metrics on the site in the stats section in the future.