THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Who are the best and worst baserunners?

I just finished my base running projections for 2011, which is basically just an estimate of true talent base running over the last 4 years.  I don’t think I do any age adjustments (even though they are obviously important).

As you can see, the value of many sluggers is significantly reduced due to their slow/poor base running, and many otherwise marginal players (and good ones) have lots of base running value.

Also, there are some things that I don’t include in valuing base running speed and talent, like advancing on WP and PB, etc.  So, you can probably add 20% or so to these numbers.  The SD in base running skill that I get is 2.1 runs, which means that most players are plus or minus 6 runs. It also means that the very best or worst are worth a little over half a win or so, which is not insignificant.  In fact, you could add or dock from a few players’ salaries 2 or 3 million (in FA dollars) a year just for good or bad base running!

Here are the top and bottom 5 base runners in true talent over the last 4 years, in runs per 150 games, which is also close to what we would expect in 2011.

Best

(Kotchmann -6.4 not sure if he is even playing anymore)
Thome -5.9 (DH’s have to run the bases too!)
B. Molina -5.5 (The 3 Molina brothers are a combined -12.1!)
Posada -5.5
Lowell -5.3
Fielder -5.1