Quote:
Originally Posted by Timofmars
Just go to the player search screen, look for all MLB batters for the year with like 300 or more ABs, and look at the SB data compared to their running/stealing. I find it gives a relatively clear picture that SB success % will be closely related to stealing, especially when looking at the few slow guys that have good stealing, compared to fast guys with poor stealing.
Your player having 7 SBs out of 9 in the minor is really small sample, and you can see many even bigger variances in the ML data for many players that don't fit what you'd expect, but it's just random variances. It should even out. And your player now being successful half the time stealing is reasonable to expect. That's not a good stealing rate, and almost surely is detrimental to the team.
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Anyone in my league who has a wide disparity in those two stats (running/stealing) doesn't seem to run much to begin with, and there's not a significant difference in success between high R/low S and low R/high S. As to the guy I'm referring to (an outfielder named Brandon Miller), when I say successful "half the time," he was 3 of 6 last year on a 523-AB sample. I only ran him if we were facing a pitcher with a particularly bad hold rating or a catcher with a weak arm -- and even then, I didn't run him much.
To know what causes a difference in success rate between high R/low S and low R/high S players, you have to know who they're facing from a battery standpoint. Just pulling numbers from all players with 300+ ABs or PAs tells you nothing about where their respective SBs and CSs came from.
What really matters here is what the developers have to say about the matchup of either the R or S stat versus a pitcher's hold ability, or a catcher's throwing ability. Trying to figure out the speed/stealing/baserunning puzzle is a bit like the discussion on pitchers' velocity/stuff/movement. It's almost like we have an extra stat, or at least one of them isn't focused well enough. In the example we're all discussing here, I wish "baserunning" was specifically limited to "baserunning instincts." I think that would make the R/S discussion a lot clearer.