The Exception to the Sabermetric Rule

A lot of times, if you are a believer in sabermetrics, as I am, you'll believe that, except in some very special circumstances (for example, a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game is really just a different matter, because maximizing run-production is not as important as a single run), some conventional baseball ways to "manufacture" runs are not the best ways to maximize run production. I'll condense the sabermetric rule here for you: outs are worth more than bases. That is to say, a trade of one out for one base is a bad trade. In fact, a base is not very valuable at all. Most sabermetricians will tell you all about what I'm going to write about today: that is, the stolen base. Now, conventional wisdom says that, if a guy is stealing around 60% of his bases, he's doing just fine. Well, sabermetrics would disagree. Sabermetricians state that you need at least a 2/3 success rate to just break even on run expectancy. Some estimates I have read put it as high as 80%(!!!), which I think it a little exaggerated, but the point is that if you have a player who stole 20 bases in 30 attempts, you probably would have scored just as many runs or more had that player attempted no stolen bases at all, and saved your team the ten outs. This makes a lot of sense, when you think about it, even if you don't want to see the math behind it. But there is one huge exception to this rule of not stealing bases unless you're good at it. That exception's name is: the 2010 Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are currently 1/39 at throwing out base-stealers. That's right. approximately 97.5% of base-stealers are successful. Can you even believe that? Now, here's my theory: even if you take a player who's a mid-level base-stealer (say a 50% guy), when the defense is that bad, you might as well go for it. I mean, if they're going to allow you to steal that many bases, they might improve their percentage throughout the year, but unless there's a dramatic improvement in the Martinez/Varitek catching combo, this team, which is largely designed around sabermetric defense, will end up having a huge, huge hole on defense which will cost them any chance the had of the playoffs. Now, admittedly, I already think that they weren't going to make the playoffs (as you may remember from our baseball preview), but that's because of two factors: 1) I believe the Red Sox slightly overvalued defense in their offseason plans (having only pitching and defense may cover 40% of the game, but it's impossible to win baseball games without scoring runs). 2) More importantly, the Red Sox neglected to think about the age of their team. I don't understand how this oversight happens, but apparently it did. And it is a problem.

Let's assume the Red Sox can increase their percentage of throwing out runners tenfold. That means they'd throw out 25% of runners. Here's the scary thing, though. That would mean that, if their average is that low, that means an average baserunner should be able to steal bases at 75% (this is, obviously, an oversimplification, but bear with me). If this is true, then teams with speed should basically be running as soon as they get on base. It's hard to imagine that strategy backfiring with that low of a percentage of baserunner kills. So I say, run. It may not, in normal circumstances, the best choice, but this is definitely an exception.