Nyjer Morgan’s Reckless Base Stealing
Last season was a rude and abrupt awakening for those thinking that Nyjer Morgan had made a step toward stardom. In 2009, Morgan combined above-average hitting with a UZR love affair to produce a breakout 4.9 WAR season. But Morgan couldn’t maintain the historic +28 UZR he posted in 2009 and, at the same time, his batting line dropped off sharply as his BABIP fell down to earth. Still, despite the catastrophic fall on offense and defense, Morgan still had one point of value to cling to: baserunning. Speed doesn’t slump, as they say, and it didn’t for Morgan in 2010. The speedster compiled another 34 stolen bases after posting 42 in his first full season in 2009.
Of course, just as batting average doesn’t tell the whole story of hitting, stolen bases don’t tell the whole story of baserunning. The caught stealing can be a costly result for a team, so much so that a player needs to succeed at least three times as often as he fails for the stolen base to provide value. And despite all of his speed, somehow Nyjer Morgan has failed to provide value via the stolen base over the course of his career.
As mentioned above, we can use a rule of thumb of at least three successful steals per caught stealing for the stolen base to provide value. Over his career, Morgan has successfully stolen 92 times and been caught 42 times, a 69% success rate which falls six percentage points short of our threshold – close, but no cigar. But for a more scientific measurement, we can use a statistic from Baseball Prospectus: EQSBR, or Equivalent Stolen Base Runs.
EQSBR confirms our rule of thumb. Morgan has a total EQSBR of -5.09 runs for his career, including an abysmal -2.91 mark for the 2010 season, when Morgan stole 34 bases but was caught 17 times. A closer look at the Baseball Prospectus statistic report for 2010, however, shows 58 stolen base opportunities (SB_OPPS), not 51, as his 34 SBs plus 17 CSs would suggest. This reveals another black mark on Morgan’s running record: he was picked off seven times (PO – PCS under the Baserunning header) by opposing pitchers. Instead of 34 successes against 17 failures, that shifts Morgan’s record to 34 successes against 24 failures, an unacceptable mark which suggests that the Nationals would be better off with Morgan staying put.
Interestingly enough, Morgan isn’t a bad baserunner overall. With other baserunning events taken into account – advancing on batted balls and other events such as passed balls and wild pitches – Morgan grades out as an above average baserunner. Despite the subtractions from his basestealing failures, Morgan’s career EQBRR – overall runs above average from baserunning – comes out to +3.9 runs. That’s nearly nine full runs above average from baserunning other than stolen bases.
Throughout his career, Morgan has provided excellent value on the bases as long as he’s not trying to steal. But Morgan just has too much raw speed to tell him to stay at home every time he reaches base. It’s clear, though, that Morgan has to change something in his approach. Either he’s stealing too often, or he’s making his steal attempts too obvious (which would help explain all the pickoffs). Fixing Morgan’s basestealing woes will be one of the easiest ways for the Nationals to recoup some of the value Morgan provided in his excellent 2009 season. It should be the first item on the agenda for Washington’s baserunning coach, as the status quo is an unfortunate waste of Morgan’s blazing speed.
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Good read… It’s times like Nyjer posting 2.8 WAR solely with his glove that make me dislike not regressing the fielding metrics when calculating WAR. I understand we’re not regressing it because it happened, it’s not a projection, but when there’s so much human error and uncertainty in the statistic itself, it seems strange to take it at face value.
Sorry for turning this comment into something totally off topic, but Nyjer’s “breakout” just seems to embody the argument so well. I’m not sure how we can say he saved three TEAM WINS with his glove, when last year, and 3 years ago he saved less than a half.
And it’s not that I dislike or disbelieve UZR methodology, but the data itself… it’s just flawed and biased and produces this kind of result.
If you want to become a great basestealer, one of the ways to do it is to try and steal too much, and then work backwards from there. Since the Pirates are essentially a minor league team with no chance at the postseason pretty much every year, maybe they are using the basic “run all the time” strategy some/most teams use at low minor league levels to teach him.
The goal (maybe this year?) would be to go from 40/20 to 30/10 or 25/7.
Also, seeing rates like this makes me appreciate the “steal every time” guys from mostly the 1980′s all the more. Coleman did nothing else well, but to have it be known in advance that you will be stealing an available base, and to succeed, is amazing. So it turns out Morgan isn’t going to be able to do that…I say it’s worth a try for a few years to be sure. Now he should probably stop though…
Nyjer Morgan doesn’t play for the Pirates anymore. They traded him to the Nationals (along with Sean Burnett, for Lastings Milledge and Joel Hanrahan) a season and a half ago. Looking at fast guys the Pirates intend to keep around, Andrew McCutchen has been over 3:1 in his SB:CS ratio both his seasons, and Jose Tabata is barely underwater at 19:7 (with -0.16 EQSBR), so I don’t think that they’re deliberately training players to steal too much and work backwards.
One thing to keep in mind about Morgan is that he played junior hockey for a while before concentrating exclusively on baseball, and it sometimes seems as though his baseball instincts aren’t all they might be. (For instance, anecdotally he often seemed to overslide bases.) I’m not sure why that wouldn’t show up in the rest of his baserunning, though; maybe because the coach helps make the decision to take the extra base?
I can’t accept the “he played junior hockey” excuse any more with Morgan. He’s a professional. He can work on these things during the offseason. He can review film of all of his prior basestealing attempts and work on what he’s doing to attract so many pickoffs and get less than desirable jumps. And if he can’t figure that out, he can be situationally aware enough not to steal as much. Jim Riggleman should have been giving him a stop sign at some point last season or sending a strong message to him by not giving him an at bat against a left hander once he started messing up.
He was really horrifying to watch last year as a Nationals’ fan. Mistakes with throwing to the pickoff man and real fundamentally unsound coupled with the fight in Florida made it tough to root for him. I keep wondering what’s really going on behind the scenes and hope that this season he realizes that the acquisitions of Corey Brown, Rick Ankiel, and Jerry Hairston, Jr. all indicate that the Nationals are not going to be but so patient with him if the things he can control don’t improve.
Is there a ‘norm’ for when a player’s sb success rate is established? OR, is there typically an improvement over time as you would hope experience accumulates?
He was 17/28 (61%), then 17/23 (74%) in first/second half last year. Even though he is on the wrong side of 30, he “only” has a little more than two full seasons under his belt.
The fact that Morgan is an above average baserunner aside from his SB/CS/PO rates means his getting caught is even more costly. When he gets picked off or caught the team loses not just an average runner on base, but one that has a better-than-average chance of scoring a run. Yet another reason for him to dial it back a couple of notches, or improve his technique significantly.
Does this consider the out-state of an inning when determining what the stolen base “break even” rate is?
When you’re running with 2 out, couldn’t you still have a positive impact even when you’re successful less than 75% of the time? And likewise, when you’re running with nobody out, wouldn’t you need to be successful more than that?
I make the loss/gain ratio in terms of run potential 2.77, 3.00, and 2.70 for 0 outs, 1 out, or 2 outs, using data from Table 1 (or 136) of The Book (Tango/Lichtman/Dolphin.) Those translate to break even percentages of 74%, 75% and 73%, so not much difference by number of outs. However, the game score and inning has a major impact on the break-even point in terms of winning, with more steals being attempted by teams that are ahead, and a lower break-even point for those attempts.
A lot of Nyjer Morgan events seem to revolve around being able to “stick it to your opponent” or “talk trash”.
You can’t talk trash on a walk, or electing not to steal a base in a situation that is not advantageous.
Really, he’s probably just playing the same style of game that he always played, through high school and the minors … where he was likely very successful with the approach.
Strangely enough, his stolen base numbers are what could be keeping in the majors, since the trend is to just look at raw counting numbers in that regard. If that’s the case, then it would actually be in his favor to try and steal as many bases as possible, and chalk up the cught stealings to being “aggresive”.
Morgan still has great range in CF and I am glad the Nats have him, but I think he should not lead off. Lets bat him 7-8th. I personally thought he was really trying too hard to help the team win last season. By batting him 8th then he wont feel pressure to be a catalyst and we might get much more out of him.
As with the Nats Nyger is a work in progress in the end educated speed wins. I love Morgans intensity and you can’t refine that its either there or it ain’t.
Excellent read. Can being an asshole somehow negatively affect WAR? I’m looking forward to his return visit to Philly to see what the fans do after he threw a ball full speed into the stands last year. MLB suspended him right before the Nats’ final series in CBP too. Wonder why?
Although Morgan comes across as a childish jerk after what he did in Philadelphia and Florida last year, he does wear his pants right instead of dragging below his shoes. I do give him credit for at least dressing like a baseball player.
Yeah, but he wears his hat crooked. You need three successful wardrobe decisions for every one fashion faux pas to provide positive value, so he’s still in the red there.
Looks like he could easily help his SB/CS ratio by just takin’ a chill pill when a lefty is pitching. On the rare occasion he gets on-base against them, his swipe rate is awful – seems likely that he has a tougher time reading whether they’re going to the plate or stepping to 1st.
In looking at Morgan’s play log for the year on FanGraphs, I see “picked off” only three times, not seven. Can someone account for the missing four pickoffs?
Morgan CS 1-3-4/6