For the season, the Astros are 17/30 in stolen bases. That's is not a good ratio, and is definitely not a good ratio to have when your team is in the basement of the league in terms of of OBP. It's hard to quantify the linkage between a stolen base/caught stealing in a game state to to the events of the rest of the inning, but some simple tools exist to inform us whether the cost/benefit of the stolen base makes sense anymore. With these somewhat crude tools, I want to take a look at the effect of having a "green light" on the base paths for a lot of the Astros.
A stolen base (SB), according to TangoTiger, is valued at .19 of runs, purely because it moves the runner over. This the marginal effect that a stolen base has on run expectations. The flip side, getting caught stealing (CS) has a value of -.44, meaning that it marginally reduces the run expectation by .44. We can break the CS run value up further, by looking at how it reduces the run expectations. It has an “inning-killing effect” of -.16 and a “moving the runner over effect” of -.02. The other -.26 is the "getting on effect" because creating an out reduces the likelihood that the next batter gets on.
At face value, we can see that stealing bases is a bad proposition because the marginal benefit exceeds the marginal costs—unless you have a “sure thing,” like Michael Bourn (who's 8/10 so far this year).
Doing so simple multiplication, we discover that so far this season, the green light policies base running. The Astros have, roughly, added 3.23 runs with via the stolen base, but have lost 5.72 runs with CS. That's a net result of -2.49 runs in 26 games, which isn't a ton. However, it's actually kind of a significant impact. In 30 stolen base attempts, they have cost themselves .08 runs per attempt. Again, this isn't a significant sounding number, but consider the fact that Astros have averaged about 4 runs a game so far this year, as that that equates to an average of .47 runs per inning (4/8.5, accounting for the sometimes played bottom of the ninth), and the significance starts to appear. The average value of a steal attempt for the Astros then is actually 17% of the average runs per inning, in the wrong direction. Begging the question: Why the Green Light?
This isn't the most significant exploration of base running metrics, but it gets to the point pretty effectively. The risk/reward, cost/benefit, whatever something/something you want to use, doesn't justify such a lose running game.
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Some of you may have noticed my rather conspicuous absence over the last few days. On Friday I finished a week long blaze of late nights and paper writing to complete my undergraduate career and then took a few days of much needed celebration and reveling with all my friends before we go our separate ways in a week or two. Expect me to be a little lax for the next few days while I squeeze in all the stupid stories I can, and then I'll get back to spending entirely too much time, thinking and writing about the Astros.
0 recs | 5 comments
Man, I hadn’t realized just how bad our baserunning has been this season. 17/30 is bad. That would need to be 21/30 before we could even begin talking about stealing bases being worthwhile.
The Crawfishboxes needs to put together a Best Practices Manual for Managing the Astros and mail a copy of it to Coop every day until it’s clear that he’s got the picture.
Some of the poor basestealing responsibility belongs to the players, even though Coop gave them the green light. Even when you have a greenlight, you should still choose your spots wisely.
I’m more concerned with management of the pitching staff this year. What do you want to bet that Roy goes into today’s game looking to induce a lot of groundballs for the defense to pick up so that he can go deeper into the game? If Coop doesn’t have the best defensive lineup on the field today, I’m gonna pull my hair out.
AstroAndy - May 5, 2009
I know some of the caught stealings were pick offs...
not that it absolves the player of blame, but those may or may not be a product of the green light. (The only reason that they might be…if the player is taking too long a lead in order to steal.) I only mention that, because it seems like we have had an above average number of pick offs so far. In Monday’s Nats game, Matsui was picked off, but was safe, because the Nats had an error.
But, in general, I agree with you. Even with respect to Bourn, as good as he is, I get frustrated when he tries to steal without seemingly considering whether the pitcher and/or catcher is hard to run on. I really don’t what Cooper’s green light policy is right now…whether it is a blanket green light or if it is just for players like Berkman, Matsui, Bourn, etc. In any event, Berkman’s attempted steal of 3d was a bad idea in Monday’s game, and it cost the Astros a run. As an general matter, I don’t think you should steal 3d base in that situation, unless you are certain you can make it.
clack - May 5, 2009
I could not agree more with your point about Berkman's attemped steal
of third base. Not only was it a very bad call, but it emphasizes the folly of trying to steal third as a general rule. Mathematically, there are very few game situations where stealing third makes strategic sense.
bwhite2323 - May 5, 2009
I think the answer to the green light question is simple:
The Astros have the green light because Cooper likes it that way. He’s a small ball manager at heart (and on the field), and despite the statistics, bad results, and inappropriate situations where the green light has been given, he will continue to use it. His stock in trade answer for a variety of strategic misplays has been “it will even out” or “that’s baseball”.
We are stuck with it … for now … so we might as well stock up on the antacid pills. About 3 per game should be sufficient.
bwhite2323 - May 5, 2009
Clarify
The -.26 is because the runner got on base and had previously earned a +.26 for his getting on value via walk or single. The -.26 simply resets that back to zero.
The -.16, the inning-killer, is the cost to the future batters to that inning.
The -.02 is the cost for the current baserunners.
tangotiger - May 11, 2009
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