Running the Bases – Part 3: The Laggards
Yesterday we looked at the best baserunners of the 2009 season; now let’s finish up by looking at the laggards. Again, these numbers are taken from Baseball Prospectus’ baserunning metric (EQBRR), which was created by Dan Fox. Stolen bases/caught stealing are already factored in FanGraphs’ version of wOBA, so I’ve just subtracted the steals (EQBRR-EQSBR).
We’ve found out that only a handful of players have had major impacts on the diamond with their baserunning, and these players are the ones who really dragged down their WAR by their plodding and/or boneheaded play on the basepaths.
Runs Melvin Mora -8 Jorge Posada -8 Carlos Lee -6 Yadier Molina -5 Pedro Feliz -5 Josh Bard -5 Billy Butler -5 Michael Young -5 Bengie Molina -5 Jim Thome -5
To no great surprise, we have a couple of Super Molina Brothers and a few “pleasantly plump” non-catchers such as Billy Butler and Carlos Lee.
Is Melvin Mora’s career over? Yep, probably. He’s going to be 38, he hit the skids offensively and now factoring in his awful baserunning, he was replacement level for 2009. He’s now a free agent, and it’s hard for me to envision him receiving a contract.
We’re filling in the holes in some player’s WAR looking at baserunning, and our own Matt Klaassen has done some hole-filling of his own with his version of quantifying catcher defense. Bookmark it folks: it’s an awesome reference on catchers. Using his run totals on some of these catchers and the baserunning numbers, the picture gets even clearer.
Yadier Molina’s gun-slinging ways have firmly established his defensive reputation. Matt has him at +7 runs — not as high as one might’ve imagined, but still very good. While Yadi’s defensive giveth, unfortunately his lack of ability on the basepaths taketh away, or at least a good bit.
The eldest and most hack-tastic Molina brother isn’t quite the hitter or the defender he once was. The d_f’s catcher metric has him at -3. For the Giants, Molina’s WAR was 1.8 but this drops him to 1 WAR. Bengie’s now a 34-year-old free agent. Given his rep as a steady backstop, I’m sure he’ll find a starting gig somewhere, whether he’s deserves it or not.
Jorge Posada stunk at both defense and baserunning. We have him at 4 WAR, which is obviously great, but when factoring Matt’s defensive numbers (-6) and his horrid baserunning, JP’s WAR goes down to 2.6, which is still good, but not quite as lofty. If you look into the scout’s dictionary and find the word “baseclogger,” you’ll see a picture of Jorge Posada.
Print This Post
Jorge is really slow & he has bad instincts. The combination is, well, not good. It’s all good so long as he can still rake. The moment the bat slows, though, things get really ugly.
Might we be double-counting non-steal baserunning? If we weren’t taking into account when computing runs created or base runs, then we may have indirectly let non-steal baserunning into the runs created or base runs formula anyway because (i) stolen bases may be correlated with non-steal baserunning and (ii) stolen bases then would have been overweighted to improve the correlation between estimated runs and a teams’ actual runs. I hope the question is clear.
In this particular case, I think it should not be the case. I believe BP builds its Run Expectancy matrix empirically (as they put it, they use a “mutli-year Run Expectancy matrix”) and not dynamic run estimator models like RC or BaseRuns. If this is indeed the case, then all we’re doing here is adding linear weights from wOBA (which encompasses whatever you want it to encompass) to baserunning run values determined in the same sort of way.
Yes, the EqBRR run values are based on linear weights.
You mention incorporating somehow the baserunning numbers into WAR for some players. Would that be these players, identified in part 2? – “Only 18 players contributed 4 or more runs, and only 13 players hurt their teams by 4 or more runs.” And will these additional numbers be visible in the “Value” lines or added into the existing offensive run numbers “behind the scenes”? Better to know out front which players are being adjusted – or simply add the baserunning component up front for all players…
Good thing Bengie doesn’t get on base very often, otherwise he would probably top this list*!
*Note: Sarcasm
Melvin Mora is done in terms of being a starting position player, in part because of the number of better thirdbasemen available this year. However he had a great year last year and a simply terrible year this year so it’s likely will regress to the mean even with aging and have a bounceback year if he got a starting position. As is, he’s going to be looked at as a utility player, which is what he started out as. Fortunately his fielding is probably around average (UZR seems to say he’s slightly below average while Tango places him average or slightly above)
I have a probably minor issue with this stat: I am not surprised to see the Orioles, and Melvin Mora in particular, ranked so low in baserunning, because Dave Trembley went insane this year. Hitting and running Aubrey Huff and Mora, having Luke Scott steal…it was just a disaster, anecdotally and now statistically. My issue is this: don’t questionable manager decisions reflect unfairly onto the player in this instance? Mora is not fast anymore, and he makes his share of mistakes, but isn’t his low score magnified by Trembley’s extremely aggressive approach on the basepaths this year? While you could argue that being forced to be active on the basepaths simply exposed Mora’s poor baserunning, that also means that many worse baserunners will not appear on this list because their managers used them more sensibly.
So as a measure of who did the most damage to their teams on the basepaths, I like it. But conclusions like “[Mora has] awful baserunning” seem less solid. I think the best way to rank players in terms of baserunning skills would be a rate version of this stat instead of a counting one. Right now this reminds me a bit of errors: Mora made a ton, but in how many opportunities, and in what situations? A rate stat for baserunning would seem to be the logical next step.
I would have bet brian mccann would be on this list. I’m sure he’s close to the bottom. Not that it matters, I’d take him on my team any day. But he’s really got a huge piano on his back.