Through play Sunday, teams were stealing bases at an 81.2% success rate compared to 72.9% last spring - a significant spike.
While teams have been running less often in recent years, effectiveness on the bases has improved, as MLB runners stole successfully at a 75% clip in each of the last three seasons, well above the historical average. In fact, when runners’ success rate hit 75.6% in 2021, it was the best rate since the 1940s. (There are only 10 seasons on record of teams stealing bases at 78% or better and each occurred before 1949.)
Triple-A saw a similar surge last season when the new rules were trialed there. Players stole 4,161 bases at a 78.5% success rate. In 2019, with no clock and smaller bases, there were 2,626 steals and a 69.6% success rate.
There will be more action - perhaps a lot more - in more condensed games this season.
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1. John DiFool2 Posted: March 07, 2023 at 06:13 PM (#6119859)So a moral quandary for our baseball philosophers -- which would be less morally inferior, the Manfred Man or a 27th roster spot reserved for a player who can only be used as a PR and only from, say, the 9th inning onward?
1940 56.1%
1941 56.3%
1942 56.6%
1943 56.2%
1944 58.1%
1945 58.1%
1946 55.3%
1947 53.2%
1948 56.1%
1949 54.3%
I absolutely love the hit and run because it so often leads to the strike 'em out throw 'em out doubly play.
I absolutely love the hit and run because it so often leads to the strike 'em out throw 'em out doubly play.
While, sadly, I don't think the hit and run ever was a smart play (though it was a lot more defensible in the 70s/80s than it would be now), there's a little bit of a set-up man save percentage thing at work with those numbers. The hit and run that works is not going to be recorded as a successful stolen base attempt, but the one that fails will lead to quite a few CS.
The danny murtaugh pirates were known for his. I was too young to be aware of that
I vote for Herb Washington.
I would certainly notice. That's a lot.
In Walt's defense, he doesn't think we notice any kind of changes.
Glenn Beckert was the best hit and run guy in the game.
Best as in could reliably make contact. He was also a solid BA guy but I don't know how many times he snuck one through the vacated hole (quiet you!) A hit and run that results in the runner on 2nd and the batter out is just a riskier sac bunt ... a "successful" hit and run is 1st and 3rd. But fair enough, surely more successful with Beckert than, say, Vic Harris or Mick Kelleher.
A career 283 hitter, at age 30 in 570 PA, Beckert hit 342. Baseball is a funny game.
Could you provide a reference for that? You state it so authoritatively and yet I have no recollection of anyone ever saying this.
Knowing the break-even point for base stealing is dependent upon also knowing the run expectancy values, and in terms of being widely understood/accepted, those are on the more recent side of baseball history.
Pete Palmer was one of the earliest to work on the run expectancy. I think he came in at 0.23 runs which would probably suggest a break even rate of 67%. I think its well known the run expectancy has come down by follow up studies. Im guessing its around 0.2 which suggests a break even rate of 70% or maybe a bit more.
It seems reasonable to suggest that over a hundred seasons the SB rate would have to be quite close to the break even pt. I know managers dont always do things logically but that's a long time to adjust the rate if you think you're stealing too much or too little.
Especially in this particular case. We don't exist in an information vacuum. Anyone who is even remotely clued in knows that there were some big changes this year. They're going to be talked about during games, and a LOT of attention will be paid to any underlying shift in the numbers (steals, batting average, game length, etc.). Which means people will be primed to notice the difference. In fact, it's likely that most of us will overestimate the change.
By 1922 Burns was gone and Frisch (who was good at stealing bases) represented a bigger part of the running game. McGraw -- who had been a big popularizer of the running game -- reacted to the changes in the game by running much less frequently.
Still, what you'll hear for decades after McGraw is a general overestimation of the value of the base gained and underestimation of the cost of an out.
While at the same time generally not valuing speed on offense for about 3 decades. (Between the start of lively ball and Aparicio/Wills) It's very strange.
Nobody in baseball talked in terms of break even.
Generally speaking I think this maybe correct but still I'd like to seem some concrete evidence you always speak in terms of authority and yet you dont cite anything. I know when I started reading about weighted runs probably in the early 90s I was thinking 0.25 runs per base and then Palmer came up with .23 and I thought is that all? So I think anecdotally you may be right but I have no idea what John McGraw or Danny Murtaugh or Branch Rickey might have thought about this.
Its not like fractions or cost/benefit analysis were invented in 1975 you know.
anyhow: Tangotiger gives us the weighted value for a whole bunch of baseball events at this link (he has totals for SB and outs at the bottom of the chart):
http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902event.html
He comes up with -0.3 runs for an out and almost (.195) .2 runs for a SB. That makes the math easy. The break even rate for a SB is 60% using those numbers. Im not really sure how he got to those numbers exactly but I guess this is a good starting pt. My only comment at this pt. is do you have to make an adjustment to these numbers if you're stealing with the best part of the batting order coming up to bat? Ie. if more SB occur at the top of the order then perhaps the value of getting to 2b is higher because you have a better chance to score with the best part of the line up coming. I dunno. But for now it seems a break even pt of 60% is a good starting pt.
now this:
WTF Ron??? This is an outrageous statement on so many levels. lets count them shall we?
1. You cant anecdotally take two runners and then presume everyone is stealing at the same rate as them. I havent bothered to look up team stealing numbers for the 1921 NYG but Im guessing its somewhat better than this.
2. You are counting blown hit and runs in there and we just got done saying or at least suggesting that obviously blown hit and runs are reducing the actual/real CS rate. Hell you yourself said this a day or two go. Hell you even mentioned blown hit/runs in the quote. Yeah you're right its NOT JUST blown hit and runs, its CS + blown hit and runs...
3. Correct me if Im wrong but before 1970 a pickoff was counted as a CS. Yes? So you've got both blown hit and runs as well as pickoffs diminishing the actual CS rates. So its not just blown hit and runs its: CS + blown hit and runs + pickoffs. No wonder the numbers are so low.
4. In a dead ball era such as pre 1920 one would expect more stealing and even lower break even pt. simply because you're very unlikely to score on a HR. So if the break even pt. in modern baseball is 60%, it might be 55% in dead ball.
5. One would expect more hit and runs in an era with less strike outs. Which I think even in 1922 teams were still thinking in dead ball terms.
So if Ross Youngs CS number reflect a 50% rate, 5% might be blown hit and runs , some x% might be pickoffs. The break even pt in that environment might be 55% and Young and Burns actual/real CS rate might still be better than break even.
But go ahead, you tell me. What do YOU think the break even point is supposed to be? You keep speaking with authority what's your number?
There's a lot of discussion out there about the break even pt. and such I'm going to do a little bit more research and see what else I can find.
http://www.tangotiger.net/customlwts.html
if you use the out and sb weighted values for an environment of 4 runs/game the break even pt for SB is 57%. I would go even further and say in an era where HRs are few the break even pt. has to be even lower. I dare say 55%.
Burns and Young might effectively be 60% given the number of pickoffs and hit and runs that are hidden in the cs statistic. They might be fairly decent runners. A bit above average.
Furthermore there's no frickin way John McGraw hadn't thought this through thoroughly. Having read a little about him and some of his strategies it seems clear that he could do the math on this on the fly in between at bats. Im sure Earl Weaver could that. No idea if other managers could maybe not.
Finally we have every reason to believe that if managers are rational beings, the SB rate should be very nearly close to break even. It has to be, if teams were not running enough someone would have started running more and won more games. If teams were running too much someone would have stopped running and won more games. Its just a natural market force at work here.
So what are the league SB rate for this era? it has to be close to break even.
EDIT: Actually Im not sure if you can use -0.3 runs as the value of a CS. Hmm
That leads to break even rate of 72.5% seems high.
I know BBs are valued at .3 but that includes the value of moving a possible runner at first up. If we go with .27 value of man at first, .2 value of sb and .23 value of out that leads us back to 70% break even for modern day, and post wwii rates were just under that but that includes pickoff and hit.runs so I'm pretty sure the post wwii rates ae very close to break even
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Which is basically the point I make. We follow baseball. We know the changes. Websites count up the stats for us, announcers tell us, the press goes nuts for a while, etc. Which "primes us to notice the difference", gives us the numbers to establish the difference (sometimes), over/under-hypes the difference, etc. Of course we notice the differences that are pointed out to us ... just like it's easy to see the differences when you turn the Highlights puzzle upside down and read the answers. :-)
But what would we notice in an information vacuum? Sure eventually you notice "geez that Boggs guy is always on the bases" ... but not nearly as quickly as you notice the McGwire 450-foot HR or the Blyleven curve or the Ryan fastball or, yes, that Rickey stole 4 bases this game. I don't even want to hazard a guess at what point you would notice league batting average has increased by .007.
Also my point is about complaints about the aesthetics of the game. Fine, there's one more SB attempt every two games. You've noticed it on your own. And that has increased your enjoyment level by ... 25%?? It's made you forget about those 3 extra boring strikeouts? You love that teams are "running wild" now? It's nostalgiac idolatry for baseball as played when we were 10, 15, 20 no different than pining for the America of the 50s or the classic rock of the 60s and early 70s or the jazz of the 50s and early 60s or when movie stars were movie stars or ...
In this particular case though, again I was responding to Duke who, watching X games of spring training, reported noticing no difference. Now we have a few possibilities: in the handful of games he's seen there was little/no difference while in games he hasn't seen there's been a noticeable difference (small sample problem); or he has in a sense noticed there were more SB attempts than usual but his brain wrote it off to pre-existing baseball behavior (i.e. the time was right for the steal or they were testing somebody's speed cuz it's spring training); or there was a change and he didn't notice. Seems perfectly reasonable to wonder if he would notice a change of a half-attempt per game over the space of 5 games (or whatever he has seen).
If you think it's noticeable then take it up with Duke who didn't notice.
Wait, you already told us we didn't notice those either.
According to b-r all that great Cards speed on the bases added ... 4 runs. They got more runs (5) out of beating out DPs.
By 1985 they really were running wild at 314-96, adding 18 runs. That's a single team successfully stealing nearly 2 bases a game, with about 2.5 attempts. One team. Now we might be in a world where both teams combined attempt 2 steals a game instead of 1.5.
Baby steps and journeys of 10,000 miles start with a single step ... but does anybody really notice? :-)
To be clear, it's all fine with me. I'm surprised slightly bigger bases might have this big an effect but I certainly have nothing against increasing steal attempts. Still strikeouts are the McGwire 450-foot HR of aesthetic problems in baseball.
He also noted that those Cardinal teams won when they got on base and when they didn't have good team OBP they didn't win (despite stealing loads of bases)
OK that's a fair pt. since that idea comes up pretty regular. I would respond this way:
1. Other than bunting, what other baseball tactics have been shown to have been wrong for years on end? We had a discussion like this some time ago and one guy brought up free agency. But Im talking about strictly on the field tactics. Sure RonWash issued too many IBB but that's one guy. Is there a tactic that the entire league was wrong about and wrong for years and years?
2. Even if people bunted too much, they finally did see the light right? I dunno how many years it took. But if you look at deadball era baseball Im not sure they were bunting too much. It was a different environment so maybe more bunting was fine for that era and they didnt adapt soon enuf. So exactly what years were they bunting too much and by how many bunts? I mean can you quantify this? Maybe that mistake only happened for a few years and the league quickly figured it out. But you dont know until you put a number on it.
3. OK so you're argument comes down to: teams are stealing at irrational rates. Right? I mean I say the rate is rational you say its not. OK so are they not stealing enuf or they are stealing too much? What do you think the actual break even rate is?
I mean for say the last 20 years. I dont really understand the last three seasons why the SB success rate has reached such a high level.
https://tht.fangraphs.com/adjusting-steals-for-win-value/
Its also interesting because in 1982 Ricky! was picked off 17 times, but 11 of them show up as CS and 6 of them are just TOOTBLANs or whatever. Its interesting because I thought after 1970 pickoffs were not counted as CS but I guess it depends. At end of the article author also seems to think that CS are twice as worse as pickoffs which I dont get.
They could be errors, though six seems like a lot of Es. But I found one like that in Game 3 of the 1982 season.
UPDATE: OK it looks like the current rule is that a pickoff is a caught stealing if the runner tries to advance, and its not a CS if he's returning to the bag. I guess that's whats going on with Ricky. I am surprised at the number of pickoffs.
ALso do we have any career stats on say Brock or Ricky! getting picked off?
If say 2/3 of those the runner heads for second, then approx 20% of the CS total are pickoffs. Not sure that makes sense. But whatever the number the effective real stealing rate is higher than the actual SB probability of success.
If say 2/3 of those the runner heads for second, then approx 20% of the CS total are pickoffs. Not sure that makes sense. But whatever the number the effective real stealing rate is higher than the actual SB probability of success.
This is actually available on B-R. 2021 and 2022 had freakishly similar totals in this regard; in 2022, 125/276 pickoffs were POCS, 2021 had 124/275.
Not every game is an average game. What I think would stand out to regular watchers in a non-recorded environment is the change in how often extreme events happen, like a game with 6 HR or 8 SB attempts or 30-plus total strikeouts.
Also, I suspect without evidence that we can perceive interactions between events more quickly than we can discrete events. In 2019, 45.2% of all runs in MLB scored via home run. In 1998 (not exactly the deadball era), that was 34.6%. (If you go back before the explosion of the '90s, 1989 was at 28.1%). You would see significantly more games where one or both teams scored on HR only in '19 than you would have 20-30 years earlier.
in 2022, 125/276 pickoffs were POCS, 2021 had 124/275.
OK so if we split them in half and designate half of pickoffs as CS then pickoffs may comprise 15% of CS. Or 22% of all steal attempts.
So if the 1920 NYG steal statistic is 55% it might be about 70% in reality once we remove pickoffs. Possibly in an environment where 60% is break even.
where did you find that stat? I been looking for it.
Calculated via the batting splits page for the league - you can get HR in each of the possible baserunner states.
2019 had 3965 HR with bases empty, 1317 with 1--, 455 -2-, 163 --3, 430 12-, 174 1-3, 118 -23, and 154 grand slams. Total of 10617 runs via HR out of 23467 for the majors overall.
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