In A Pickle: Oakland's... (08/16)
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August 16, 2012 Overthinking ItRunning, But Running Out of Time, in the NL EastOn Wednesday night, the Braves shut down the Padres behind another strong start by deadline trade target Paul Maholm. Thanks to a 27-13 run since the start of July, Atlanta’s record stands a season-high 18 games over .500. However, while the Braves have nipped at the first-place Nationals’ heels—at times this month, only two games have separated the NL East’s top teams—they haven’t been able to close the gap completely. The Nats, who won their own game Wednesday on the strength of six precious innings from Stephen Strasburg’s dwindling supply, have matched them win for win. However, while the Nationals own the NL’s best record, they haven’t yet locked up a division title. Washington won’t have Strasburg on its side for much longer, and the Braves will be right behind them, waiting to capitalize on any sign of weakness. Both teams boast playoff odds north of 90 percent, so neither is likely to miss the postseason (though after the way things went for the Braves last September, they probably aren’t taking a trip to October for granted). But the real prize—a first-place finish, and a guaranteed ticket to the first round of the playoffs—remains at stake. The Nats have the better pitching staff and defense, and both teams are evenly matched on offense. But the Braves do have a sizeable advantage over the Nats in one often-overlooked area: baserunning. How a team hits, pitches, and fields has more to do with its place in the standings than its performance on the basepaths. However, if two clubs are close to evenly matched in most respects but differ greatly in their ability to take the extra base, that difference can prove decisive. Baseball Prospectus offers a stat called Baserunning Runs (BRR), which measures the number of runs a player adds or subtracts by advancing more or fewer bases than expected, given his number of opportunities. The Braves and Nationals couldn’t be any farther apart on the team BRR leaderboard: Atlanta is baseball’s best baserunning team, with 13.7 BRR, while Washington is the worst, with -14.9. The Braves have been almost four runs better than the next-best baserunning team, while the Nats fall a full five runs below the next-worst. By no means is an inability to run the bases a fatal flaw for Washington. The 2011 Cardinals, last year’s World Series winners, also posted the lowest BRR in the big leagues, though the Cardinals’ BRR wasn’t quite as bad; not since the 2009 Orioles has a team finished a season with a BRR as low as the Nats’, and not since the Curse-killing 2004 Red Sox has a team run as poorly and still made the playoffs. Washington can overcome its weakness, but the team’s bad baserunning is still a significant obstacle in the way of an easy victory over Atlanta. The difference due to baserunning between the two teams amounts to nearly three wins, which means that the Nationals’ lead would nearly be doubled if the clubs’ rankings were reversed. And if the Braves do manage to make a run and beat out the Nats by a game or two, they’ll have their ability on the basepaths to thank. We can dig a little deeper to see exactly where the Braves are excelling and the Nats are falling flat. The Braves owe their baserunning prowess almost entirely to Michael Bourn and Jason Heyward, who rank first and third in the majors, respectively, in individual BRR. Bourn and Heyward have combined for 15.4 runs on the bases, which means that their teammates have been a net negative. However, Atlanta lacks any truly terrible runners—fragile 40-year-old Chipper Jones brings up the rear at -2.6—and the two speedsters have been a dangerous enough duo to lift the rest of the roster. Thanks largely to them, Braves baserunners have scored in 33 percent of their times on base, tied for the highest percentage in baseball. (Major-league average is an even 30 percent.) The Nats lack any individual performances as extreme as the Braves’, ranging from Adam LaRoche (-3.7) at the low end to Ian Desmond (4.2) at the high end. However, the distribution is tilted toward the negatives: the Nats have only two players who’ve contributed more than one run with their legs (Desmond and Bryce Harper), but 11 who’ve given at least one away (including Strasburg, who might not be good at everything after all). Washington’s bad baserunning has been a true team effort.
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Value Picks: Starting Pitching for 8/16/12
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I may be biased (as an unabashed Braves fan), but I do feel that the Braves defense is every bit as good as that of the Nats if not better, especially once Simmons comes back from his thumb injury. The Braves outfield defense is historically great, and while Uggla is generally a black-hole, Chipper and Freeman have been league average given their age and range-issues, respectively, and Simmons is probably the best SS in the game defensively, small sample aside.
As a Nationals fan, I point you to the following helpful statistic regarding team defense:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1091208
Note that WAS is 2nd (as of this writing), ATL 16th.
I agree. According to UZR the Braves have the 2nd best defense in MLB. According to UZR/150 the Braves have the best defense in MLB. The Nats are ranked about 10th in MLB using those stats.
http://bit.ly/QJw8jm
What we know for sure is that the Braves give up an essentially league average number of hits on balls in play. What UZR asserts is that the Braves' defense is so gifted that it's masking an especially difficult distribution of balls in play, that for a team with a less gifted defense would result in a substantially worse than average hits allowed rate. Now, is it possible that this is true? Yes. I don't think it's especially likely, though, and I have many reservations about the ability of UZR to measure that sort of thing accurately.