Gerald Laird Leads Tigers in Base Running

For most of baseball history, the only available measures of base running were stolen bases and caught stealing. Thanks to play by play data bases such as Retrosheet, it is now possible to track such events as advancing from first to third on a single and advancing on fly outs and ground outs. I talked a lot about base running measures in a series of articles last year. The most advanced base running statistics were developed by Dan Fox and can be found at Baseball Prospectus. They include the following (all of them are runs above average):

• EqGAR (Equivalent Ground Advancement Runs) - Contribution of advancement on ground outs.
  

• EqSBR (Equivalent Stolen Base Runs) - contribution of stolen bases including runs subtracted for caught stealings and pickoffs.

• EqAAR (Equivalent Air Advancement Runs) - Contribution of base runners advancing on fly outs

• EqHAR (Equivalent Hit Advancement Runs) - contribution of runners taking the extra base on a hit: first to third on a single, second to home on a single, first to home on a double.
  

• EqOAR (Equivalent Other Advancement Runs) - contribution of other base running advancements - passed balls, wild pitches and balks (evidence shows that those events are not entirely random and are influenced by base runners to an extent).
  

• EqBRR (Equivalent Base Running Runs)- the sum of the five above statistics above or total base running contribution.

Note that players are penalized for making outs and also for not advancing when the average base runner would have been expected to do so.

The Tigers have scored runs on the bases as follows so far in 2009:

EqGAR = -0.3 runs above (below in their case) average on ground outs
EqSBR = -5.2 on base stealing
EqAAR = -0.2 on fly ball outs
EqHAR = 1.2 taking the extra base on hits
EqOAR = 1.2 on other events
EqBRR = -3.2 total base running runs above average

Overall, the Tigers are 3.2 runs below the average team on the bases which ranks them 15th in baseball. Other than base stealing though, they have been an above average base running team They are 2.1 above average on all other base running advancement combined.

Individually, the Tigers leading base runner is not Josh Anderson or Curtis Granderson or Ramon Santiago but catcher Gerald Laird. He is 2.4 runs better than league average with places him in the American League top twenty and first among catchers. It may surprise some that Laird is the team's best base runner but I think Tigers fans that watch the team every day have seen that he is reasonably fast for a catcher and a smart base runner. Equivalent Base Running Runs for others are shown below:

Laird 2.4
Everett 1.4
thomas 0.9
Ordonez 0.0
Granderson -0.1
Anderson -0.2
Raburn -0.2
Inge -0.8
Polanco -0.9
Cabrera -1.6
Santiago-2.3
Thames-2.5