from Amazon
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Is Posada the worst base runner in the world?
That seems to be the concensus from this discussion on BTF:
Presumably, they are arguing that he is a lousy base runner, over and above the fact that he is very slow, especially as a 39 year-old former catcher.
But, is it selective memory from observation, recent memories unfairly extrapolated to larger sample sizes, is he just very old and slow now and nothing more, etc.? You decide!
Here are Posada’s base running lwts per 150 opportunity games, as computed by me, for the last 10 years:
2001 -1
2002 -3.6
2003 -4.6
2004 -3.5
2005 -3.0
2006 -3.5
2007 -5.4
2008 -3.5
2009 -11.4
2010 -7.8
10-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 4.73
5-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 6.32
3-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 7.57
Here are the same numbers for Benjie Molina, also known as a very slow catcher and almost 37 years old, almost 2 years younger than Jorge . I have never heard anyone say that he was also a terrible base runner.
2001 -2.2
2002 -8.3
2003 -1.7
2004 -1.8
2005 -6.8
2006 -7.7
2007 -5.9
2008 -6.4
2009 -6.5
2010 -4.6
10-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 5.19
5-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 6.22
3-year average (not weighted for games or opps): 5.83