Taking the extra base
The ground game
On the fly
Stolen bases, etc.
Who was the best Tigers base runner?
Best base runners in baseball
In previous posts, I looked at how often Tigers base runners took extra bases on hits, advanced on infield grounders, moved up on balls hit in the air to outfielders and advanced on plays where the ball was not hit. Now, I'm going to combine all the information and calculate a summary measure which should help determine the best base runners in 2007.
First, I'll explain the calculation for Total Bases Gained (BG Total) on all the different types of running plays using Brandon Inge as an example:
- Inge took the extra base on a hit 15 times and was thrown out 1 time. The out carries a weight of 3 so his Bases Gained on hits (BG Hits) was 15-3 = 12.
- He advanced on ground outs 14 times and was not thrown out so his Bases Gained on ground outs (BG Ground) was 14.
- He advanced on air outs 6 times and was thrown out 1 times so his Bases Gained on air outs (BG Air) was 6-3=3.
- He took bases on plays where the ball was not hit (SB, WP, PB, BK) 19 times and was thrown out 3 times. On these plays, the out carries a weight of 2.3 so his Based Gained on other events (BG Other) = 19 - 3 X 2.3 = 12.1.
- This gave him a BG Total of 12+14+3+12.1 = 41.1.
- Inge had 40 opportunities to take an extra base on a hit. The MLB success rate was 35.5% so an average runner would be expected to gain .36 X 40 = 14.4 bases. Therefore, he had 12 -14.2 = -2.2 Bases Gained Above (below in this case) Average on hits (BGAA Hits).
- Inge had 24 opportunities to advance on ground outs. The MLB success rate was 38.2% so the expected bases gained was 9.1. Thus, he had 14-9.2=4.8 Bases Gained Above Average on ground outs (BGAA Ground).
- Inge had 33 opportunities to advance on air outs. The MLB success rate was 20.2% so the expected bases gained was 6.6. Therefore, he had 3-6.7=-3.7 Bases Gained on air outs (BGAA Air). Of course, the negative number means that he was actually 3.7 bases below average.
- Inge was on base 179 times not including home runs. The MLB rate of other bases gained per time on base was 3.8% so the expected bases gained would be 6.8. Thus, he had 12.1-6.8 = 5.3 Bases Gained Above average on other plays (BGAA Other) .
- Finally, the BGAA Total for Guillen was -2.2 + 4.8 - 3.7 + 5.3 = 4.2. So, by this statistic, Inge was a slightly above average base runner in 2007.
Pudge Rodriguez, last year's team BGAA leader, was 3.3 runs below average this year. On the other had, Granderson and Inge finished above average for the second straight year.
As a team, the Tigers finished 1.3 bases gained above league average. They actually finished well above average on hits (10.7) and balls not hit (16.2). However, they did not do well on ground outs (-17.6) or air outs (-8.0).
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by
Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at "www.retrosheet.org".
Table: Total Bases Gained Above Average for Tigers in 2007
| Player | BG Hits | BGAA Hits | BG Ground | BGAA Ground | BG Air | BGAA Air | BG Other | BGAA Other | BG Total | BGAA Total |
| Granderson | 26.0 | -2.5 | 21.0 | 4.1 | 11.0 | -0.3 | 28.1 | 19.2 | 86.1 | 20.5 |
| Renteria | 25.0 | 6.5 | 9.0 | -1.0 | 8.0 | 2.3 | 14.4 | 6.0 | 56.4 | 13.8 |
| Sheffield | 26.0 | 6.1 | 0.0 | -6.1 | 6.0 | 0.1 | 16.6 | 8.2 | 48.6 | 8.2 |
| Inge | 12.0 | -2.2 | 14.0 | 4.8 | 3.0 | -3.7 | 12.1 | 5.3 | 41.1 | 4.2 |
| Ordonez | 22.0 | -1.9 | 13.0 | -1.9 | 6.0 | 0.1 | 13.7 | 3.1 | 54.7 | -0.6 |
| Polanco | 32.0 | 5.6 | 6.0 | -3.6 | 2.0 | -5.1 | 10.8 | 0.7 | 50.8 | -2.3 |
| Rodriguez | 14.0 | -1.0 | 10.0 | 1.2 | 5.0 | 0.3 | 2.4 | -3.8 | 31.4 | -3.3 |
| Jones | 4.0 | -9.5 | 14.0 | 4.8 | 6.0 | 0.9 | 7.1 | 0.1 | 31.1 | -3.7 |
| Casey | 10.0 | -0.3 | 4.0 | -3.3 | 5.0 | 0.7 | 4.1 | -2.7 | 23.1 | -5.6 |
| Guillen | 22.0 | 4.2 | 7.0 | -4.9 | 8.0 | 1.9 | -2.7 | -10.9 | 34.3 | -9.7 |
| Monroe | 15.0 | 2.5 | 1.0 | -4.7 | 1.0 | -0.0 | -6.9 | -10.5 | 10.1 | -12.7 |
| Cabrera | 15.0 | -3.5 | 4.0 | -4.8 | -4.0 | -8.3 | 5.7 | -3.6 | 20.7 | -20.2 |
| Team Totals | 213.0 | 10.7 | 92.0 | -17.6 | 53.0 | -8.0 | 99.7 | 16.2 | 457.7 | 1.3 |
| MLB Averages | 175.5 | 0.0 | 114.7 | 0.0 | 56.5 | -0.0 | 81.2 | 0.0 | 427.9 | 0.0 |
Awesome series. I wish more team blogs did these sorts of studies. Or even took publicly available numbers and discussed them on a team-level.
ReplyDeleteAny chance of converting everything to runs? That way you can combine hitting with fielding with baserunning.
I have the data to do it but it would take a while. Dan Fox has converted everything to runs and will publish it in the Baseball Prospectus Annual. I'm hoping he does it for all the players so we can just use his numbers. If not, I'll try to re-write my programs so I get runs instead of just bases for the Tigers.
ReplyDeleteLee
Good stuff Lee!
ReplyDeleteInteresting... From watching the games, I would have suspected Guillen to be much higher.
ReplyDeleteIs it that hard, Lee? For each base-out state, we know the expected number of runs. You can compare before and after for each of the baserunning situations and then compare to average. Of course, it's beyond my programming abilities ; )
ReplyDeleteI agree it's not hard conceptually. It's just a little tedious to program. I tend to do everything in SAS and SAS is not the best language for working with retrosheet data. If I get around to doing it though, I'll let you know.
ReplyDelete