Chukars Corner

Chukars outfielder Hilton Richardson entered the 2009 season with a mediocre base-stealing resume. In two professional seasons, Richardson had stolen 22 bases in 36 attempts, a 61 percent success rate.

At first glance, that doesn’t sound too bad. But with the studies done on stolen bases, it’s below average. Even the most traditional teams have pulled back from the wild days of the ’80s, when all that mattered was how many bases you stole, not how good you were at.

So Richardson spent the offseason working with the Royals minor league baserunning coordinator Quilvio Veras, studying Jose Reyes and Jimmy Rollins and learning how to detect pitcher tendencies. Plus, he says he’s just gotten faster.

While half of a short-season rookie summer is too small to make any grand declarations, Richardson has found something that’s working — he’s 13 for 13 on stolen base attempts this season, leaving him tied for third in the league in stolen bases after Thursday’s games.

But no matter what he  does the rest of the season, there is no way he is catching Helena’s Joshua Prince. Prince has been done his best Rickey Henderson impersonation in the Pioneer League and he’s running away with the stolen base category at 26, so far.

But the question is, whose plethora of stolen bases would you take: Richardson’s or Prince’s?

At first, it seems obvious. Yeah, Prince has been caught six times, but 26 is twice as much as 13, so Prince. Duh.

This is where the new school of stats comes in and proves the traditional wisdom wrong. Thanks to the work of many researchers, we now know what each situation of an inning is worth in terms of expected runs.

When the bases are empty, the batting team averages 0.5379 runs that inning based on data compiled from real-life Major League situations. If a runner reaches first with no outs, the batting teams gets a boost to 0.9259. And so on and so on. You can see the full table below.

EXPECTED RUNS TABLE

James Click’s chapter, and table, on baserunning in “Baseball Between the Numbers” does the leg work for us in determing what each possible situation of an inning is worth. He studied every situation from the 2004 MLB season, the following results and then averaged them to determine expected runs from each situation. Expected runs have changed drastically since the 1970s, when a runner on first with no outs was worth 0.783 runs, thanks to the rise in offense. But over the last decade, the numbers have stayed around the averages listed above, so we’ll stick with them.

While that looks like a headache-inducing table of numbers from 11th grade, stay with me because that table allows us to measure exactly how many runs Richardson and Prince have added to their teams by stealing bases.

Say Richardson reaches first with no outs. By stealing second base successfully, he increases the Chukars’ expected runs that inning from 0.9259 to 1.1596, a gain of 0.2337 runs. If he’s caught, then the situation drops to bases empty with one out, worth 0.2866 runs, and he’s cost the team 0.6393 runs.

Immediately, you should notice getting caught is much, much more detrimental than a stolen base is beneficial. That’s because getting caught trades in the most precious resource the batting team has, one of its 27 outs.

And before you go on to say a runner that steals bases has more value because he puts pressure on the defense, stop. Yes, he does. The fastest baserunners from 1999 to 2004, according to Click, increased the OPS of the batter at the plate by 24 points. The slowest, by 13 points. That means the difference between the fastest and the slowest runners on the batter is a 11 points of OPS, a number, but not a significant one.

Back to Richardson and Prince. Since we know what each situation is worth, we can go back and add up the situation of each stolen base and see who created the most runs for his team, which is really all that matters, by stealing bases.

So, what does our study tell us?

Richardson, in going 13-for-13 in stolen-base attempts, has created 1.9607 runs for the Chukars.

Prince, in stealing 26 bases, has created 6.6258 runs for the Helena Brewers. But because he was caught stealing six times and because he’s been picked off five times, he’s given back 6.7138 runs, netting him a total of negative 0.088 runs created. Yes, he’s cost his team runs.

To make sense of the runs, let’s apply it to the formula that 10 runs equal one win over 162-game season. Scale that back to a 76-game season, and approximately 4.5 runs equals one win.

That means, just in terms of stolen bases, Richardson has added 0.44 wins to the Chukars. Prince, negative 0.019. Don’t be surprised that a player’s stolen bases never add up to a full win. Even when Scott Podsednik stole 70 bases in 2004, and was caught 13 times, he only added 0.64 wins. Stolen bases bases just aren’t as valuable as you think.

Go back to our original question: Whose stolen bases would you take, Richardson’s or Prince’s?

Would you still take Prince?

***All stats current after the games of Thursday, July 30***