Daily Notes: Stolen Bases Converted into Distance

Table of Contents
The following is the table of contents for today’s Daily Notes.

1. Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
2. Regarding to What the Author is Listening
3. Rickey Henderson’s Base Stealing, Converted to Distance
4. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
5. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
The present author is David G Temple, i.e. me. I’m usually a contributor to NotGraphs, however Mr. Cistulli has trusted me with presenting the Daily Notes for this fine Saturday. My hopes are to a.) provide you with some interesting brain bits for your brain, and b.) prove my worth to my family, my friends, and myself.

Regarding to What the Author is Listening
It has become the case in the last week or so that I cannot seem to be productive in the morning without playing the following track at levels that will certainly damage my hearing. Today is no different.

Rickey Henderson’s Base Stealing, Converted to Distance
This idea came to me for no apparent reason, recently, and I threw the factoid out on Twitter: Rickey Henderson’s total successful steals (1,406) converts to traveling the equivalent of  nearly 24 miles (23.97). Add in the 335 times he was caught stealing — also the most in Major-League history — which would consist of him mostly traveling 90 feet anyway, and he traveled almost 30 miles (29.7) whilst attempting to steal a base. This is, of course, saying nothing about your run-of-the-mill, mom-and-pop base running. He covered nearly 30 miles just trying to steal.

Where do current players rank in this arbitrary measurement?

Is a question you are certainly not asking. Below is the top ten leaders in stolen bases with distances converted to miles, as well as kilometers for you ardent non-patriots.

Rank Name SB Miles Kilometers
1 Juan Pierre 609 10.38 16.71
2 Ichiro Suzuki 461 7.86 12.65
3 Carl Crawford 441 7.52 12.10
4 Jose Reyes 415 7.07 11.38
5 Jimmy Rollins 410 6.99 11.25
6 Derek Jeter 348 5.93 9.55
7 Alex Rodriguez 318 5.42 8.72
8 Rafael Furcal 314 5.35 8.61
9 Carlos Beltran 307 5.23 8.42
10 Michael Bourn 287 4.89 7.87

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Pirates at Angles | 22:00 ET
Francisco Liriano (he with 48 IP and a 78 xFIP-) takes on Jerome Williams (71. IP, 101 xFIP-). Sources tell me that the other players on the team will also be involved. Liriano may be of the most interest to the reader, since he used to be great then quite terrible and is now good again. His recent success can’t totally be explained by a career-high swing rate (46.5% vs. 44.7% career) and a career-low contact rate (69.0% vs. 72.7%), but this probably means something.

Reader’s Preferred Broadcast: LA Angels of A TV.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with my own NERD scores assigned. In this case, a pitchers NERD score indicates how many steals he’s allowed in miles, and the team’s NERD score indicates the career stolen bases in miles for the current members of each team.* Total NERD score is a simple average.

Note: the following table may not be entirely sortable.

Away SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP Home Time
Jhoulys Chacin COL .34 7.14 4.46 8.08 2.28 WAS Dan Haren 12:05
Alex Colome TBA 0 8.11 9.9 29.18 2.34 NYY CC Sabathia 13:05
 Mig. Gonzalez BAL .05 12.02 9.4 19.40 1 TOR C.M. Wang 13:07
Bud Norris HOU .82 3.51 3.61 9.85 .24 CHC Travis Wood 16:05
Jose Quintana CHW .20 8.81 4.71 9.41 .43 KCR Wade Davis 14:10
Dillon Gee NYM .31 6.56 5.28 14.11 .14 PHI Jon. Pettibone 16:05
Jacob Turner MIA .22 15.87 6.49 7.74 2.13 SFG Barry Zito 16:05
Tim Hudson ATL 1.72 10.13 5.60 10.53 .03 MIL Donovan Hand 16:10
Allen Webster BOS 0 11.81 5.11 7.64 1 DET Max Scherzer 19:15
P.J. Walters MIN .15 3.92 4.41 13.30 .29 CLE Corey Kluber 19:15
Dan Straily OAK .20 9.12 4.98 8.51 2.06 SEA Aaron Harang 22:10
Martin Perez TEX .02 12.09 6.76 14.80 .14 STL Shelby Miller 19:15
F. Liriano PIT 1.21 8.34 4.71 8.44 .84 LAA J. Williams 22:05
Mike Leake CIN .38 8.69 4.81 10.07 .09 ARI Patrick Corbin 19:15
Zack Greinke LAD .92 22.65 8.77 10.03 1.48 SDP E. Volquez 22:15

 

*Please note the totals are for the players’ entire career, not just what they amassed whilst on their current team.





David G. Temple is the Managing Editor of TechGraphs and a contributor to FanGraphs, NotGraphs and The Hardball Times. He hosts the award-eligible podcast Stealing Home. Dayn Perry once called him a "Bible Made of Lasers." Follow him on Twitter @davidgtemple.

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Gordon Shumway
10 years ago

Nice work, Mr. Temple. Though I’m not sure how I feel about replacing the NERD scores with stolen base data. While certainly interesting, it does not offer quite the same level of insight into the day’s match ups that I have come to expect from the Daily Notes.

MagicHat#5
10 years ago
Reply to  Gordon Shumway

I couldn’t disagree more. No reason, just different strokes for different folks. I liked the SB stuff.