OK....You guys know I'm not real good on a computer. WHERE'S THE "SPIT" BUTTON? Dude. If you want to see the long ball, go watch semi-pro softball. I once saw ten straight home runs.............starting with the usual lead off man. But a normal score there is something like 31-30. Good defense, smart baserunning, bunting, hitting, and stealing makes this game so interesting. If everyone who walks up to the plate and points to the fence can do just that, don't you think all sec teams will be recruiting for that?
That would be stealing at a 75 percent success rate wouldn't it. All I am saying is there is a reason the best teams in baseball don't steal or bunt. It hurts run production. The Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's had two of the best offenses in baseball and neither one stole bases or bunted anywherew near the major league average. That small ball crap is just part of the baseball insider machine. This is the best runs created formula I have seen. Runs Created = (Hits + Walks) * Total Bases/(At Bats + Walks) it is the one used by the GM of the Dodgers, Billy Beane of the A's and Epstein of the Bo Sox. It generated the run total of every major legue team within 20 runs for the last 15 major league seasons. All that matters is On Base percentage. Stolen bases do not contribute to run productionin any signifigant way. Read up guys http://knology.net/~johnfjarvis/baseball.html and stop listening to the game announcers. They know nothing.
All right. Say he gets thrown out in his last 2 steal attempts. That's still 2 more runs than they would have gotten if he hadn't attempted one steal. You are trying to refute 100 years of baseball wisdom. Granted "the book" doesn't always work but it's based on hundreds of thousands of games experience. And they have how many World Championships between them? Let me think. Oh yeah...Zero. So you're saying George Costanza could have been an analyst.
The Marlins won the World Series last year playing small ball. The pressure on a pitcher created by an aggressive base runner can help distract the pitcher and cause him to make a less than perfect pitch, thus potentially increasing run production.
That is the theory, but it has no basis in fact. If the runner stays on first the first basemen has to hold him on. The secondbasemen creeps out of position hoping for a double play. It widens the infield hole creating more more place for a ball put in place to travel. All the stats point to the fact that a base runner with no outs scores from first more often than a base runner from second with one out.
Please, enlighten us as to where you went to Baseball College? Which teams have you coached? Which championship teams have you played on? I'll ask you to notice that you are the only one arguing this moronic point of view.
If you dont want to listen to me go into excel plug in runs as the one variable and stolen bases as the other then do a correlations. The line will be almost flat. In fact stolen bases has an r-value that is slightly greater than that of a strikeout. Here the work is already done on this website http://www.sju.edu/~sforman/research/talks/baseball/node11.html Here too http://www.strikethree.com/99/05/04/derek.shtml The teams who use stats and not tradition are the teams that are winning. LA and Boston are both listening to the sabrmaticians, and they are both in first place. Oakland has been follwing the Bill Jamesian philosopgy for the last 10 or 12 years and no team has been more successful at winning games than them. You don't need to steal bases to create runs. And if you say you do you are a fool who is holding to a tradition. Stolen bases were slightly more important in the high mound era, but in the low mound era they are worthless. All the stats show this.
Once again, how many championships have LA and Oakland and Boston won in the last 10 or 12 years? None. Case in point. You rely on math, I'll rely on baseball.
