Twins 2008 Baserunning Stats

First of all, nice work – I always love reading this kind of stuff.

I think the “scoring from first on a single” and “failing to score from second on a double” results aren’t actually all that useful – those only happen with either really fast/slow runners or really fluky plays, and I don’t know that the data is all that useful. Also, out of curiosity, do the scoring numbers include scoring on errors? I am surprised that the Twins had so many guys score from first on singles without errors being involved.

I think another useful bit of info would be moving from first to third on singles… I’m not sure whether that info is any easier to collate, though.

A runners ability to score from first on a double, for example, would partially depend on the “quality” of the double. A hit could be an obvious single for Kubel, but someone like Gomez or Casilla would stretch it into a double. Any idea how much the data is affected by that?

But it does explain why the Twins are better than average at hitting with RISP. Speed doesn’t go into slumps. For this and other reasons, I think the Twins will always do better than the station-to-staion teams at squeezing out more runs than their OPS numbers would suggest.

Beyond speed, I continuously marvel at how good Mauer is on the bases. I’ve never seen him get doubled off, but he gets impossible jumps on balls hit to the outfield. He must be incredibly adept at reading balls off of Morneau’s bat. Several of his first-to-third runs on Morneau singles were on Texas Leaguers.

Using MLB Gameday play by play data to determine a full accounting of runs allocated to hitting, running, fielding and pitching throughout the season. I’ve completed the initial offensive analysis, including baserunning. Basically, I looked at each situation using Expected Runs (ER) for the given situation (e.g., bases loaded 2 outs). I broke down each AB into a number of transitions that could be assigned to the hitter/runner/fielder/pitcher depending on offense or defense.

For baserunners, ER allocation is straight forward for SB, CS and outs on the base paths (OOBP). The runner is assigned the positive or negative difference in ER. I also allocated for taking (or not taking) the extra base. Basically what I did is calculate the average advance rate based on location the ball was hit (position for now, soon to be zone) and type of hit (GB, FB, LD, etc.) For example, I found that on a GB hit to the RF, the runner advanced 1st to 3rd 437 times, stayed on second 601 times, and was thrown out 19 times. Because the runner is expected to advance 41.4% of the time, I allocate an additional 41% of the ER difference between 1st-2nd and 1st-3rd to the hitter. My thinking is that by grounding to RF, the is responsible for a portion of the runner advancing to third. Then the baserunner is allocated ER based on what actually happened, advance (gets the other 59), stay (loses the 41 that was added to the hitter) or out (big loss of the 41% plus the out). This analysis also allowed me to quantify the baserunning in terms of runs.

What I found was interesting, both for Minnesota and the entire league. Matt Tolbert graded as the best baserunner, at 5.5 runs, primarily because he had only 1 CS and no other OOBP while advancing the extra base 62% of the time (18 of 29), tops in the majors, MLB average being about 33%. Tolbert was followed by Mauer (5.1), Casilla (2.0), Ruiz (1.5), Span (1.3) and Gomez (0.9). Gomez was hurt by his 12 CS (tops on team) and 10 OOBP (tied with Delmon for tops). At the bottom were Monroe (-2.4), Young (-2.0), Pridie (-1.9), Kubel (-1.7) and Buscher (-1.2).

I also found it interesting that we by far took the most “extra bases” (defined as advancing a base when the probability of advancing was less than 50%), with 533 EB. Next best was Texas with 472, league median being 408 (Boston).

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