Daily Notes: Best and Worst Base-Stealers, By One Measure

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Best and Worst Base-Stealers, By One Measure
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Best and Worst Base-Stealers, By One Measure
Introduction
With regard to the art and science of base-stealing — and assessing its best and worst practitioners — it’s fair to say that there are two main elements one must consider. First, a runner must steal bases efficiently per attempt. Some combination of empirical study and also Pete Palmer reveal that, depending on the run environment of the league or park or whatever, a runner must generally be successful on something like two-thirds or three-quarters of his stolen-base attempts just to break even in terms of runs gained or lost.

Moreover, to be regarded as a legitimate base-stealing threat, a runner must also attempt to steal rather frequently per stolen-base opportunity. It’s fair to say that, all things being equal, two runners who’ve finished the season 5-for-5 on stolen-base attempts have been equally valuable in terms of runs produced from stolen bases. However, if the former player did so in 100 opportunities while the latter did it in just 20, then surely the latter must be regarded as the more impressive base-stealer.

To account both for the efficiency and frequency of 2013’s base-stealers, the author has first calculated every major leaguer’s stolen-base runs using the current linear-weight values both for stolen bases and caught stealing, and then divided that figure by stolen-base opportunities (i.e. plate appearances during which a runner is on first or second with the next base open). Finally, the author has multiplied that result by 100, such that one is left with stolen-base runs per 100 stolen-base opportunities.

The results of those calculations are available below.

Leaderboard: Stolen-Base Runs per Hundred Opportunities
Below are the top-10 players this season by stolen-base runs per every 100 opportunities (minimum 25 stolen-base opportunities). SBO stands for stolen-base opportunities; SBA, stolen-base attempts; SBA%, SBA per SBO; SBR, stolen-base runs; and SBR/100, stolen-base runs per 100 stolen-base opportunities.

Rank	Name	Tm	SBO	SBA	SBA%	SB	CS	SBR	SB%	SBR/100
1	Rajai Davis	TOR	61	23	37.7%	21	2	3.4	91.3%	5.6
2	Elliot Johnson	KCR	40	11	27.5%	11	0	2.2	100.0%	5.5
3	Pedro Ciriaco	SDP	26	6	23.1%	6	0	1.2	100.0%	4.6
4	DJ LeMahieu	COL	50	12	24.0%	11	1	1.8	91.7%	3.6
5	Jacoby Ellsbury	BOS	153	36	23.5%	33	3	5.4	91.7%	3.5
6	Leonys Martin	TEX	90	19	21.1%	17	2	2.6	89.5%	2.9
7	Jean Segura	MIL	127	27	21.3%	24	3	3.6	88.9%	2.9
8	Jose Reyes	TOR	40	5	12.5%	5	0	1.0	100.0%	2.5
9	Nate McLouth	BAL	131	28	21.4%	24	4	3.2	85.7%	2.5
10	Everth Cabrera	SDP	142	38	26.8%	31	7	3.5	81.6%	2.4

Laggardboard: Stolen-Base Runs per Hundred Opportunities
Now here are the bottom-10 players this season by stolen-base runs per every 100 opportunities (again, minimum 25 stolen-base opportunities):

Rank	Name	Tm	SBO	SBA	SBA%	SB	CS	SBR	SB%	SBR/100
1	Mark Kotsay	SDP	26	2	7.7%	0	2	-0.8	0.0%	-3.0
2	Clete Thomas	MIN	41	3	7.3%	0	3	-1.2	0.0%	-2.9
3	Jimmy Paredes	HOU	30	5	16.7%	2	3	-0.8	40.0%	-2.6
4	Robbie Grossman	HOU	50	6	12.0%	2	4	-1.2	33.3%	-2.3
5	Yoenis Cespedes	OAK	76	7	9.2%	2	5	-1.6	28.6%	-2.0
6	David Murphy	TEX	69	5	7.2%	1	4	-1.4	20.0%	-2.0
7	Jurickson Profar	TEX	44	2	4.5%	0	2	-0.8	0.0%	-1.8
8	Adeiny Hechavarria	MIA	65	9	13.8%	4	5	-1.2	44.4%	-1.8
9	Ryan Roberts	TBR	45	2	4.4%	0	2	-0.8	0.0%	-1.7
10	J.B. Shuck	LAA	68	6	8.8%	2	4	-1.2	33.3%	-1.7

Three Notes
• Arizona outfielder Gerardo Parra has recorded the lowest total of runs from stolen bases, at -2.3.

• Figures from Baseball Reference have been very helpful in the composition of this post.

• A complete spreadsheet of every major-leaguer is available here, provided the author has uploaded the file correctly.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Miami at Atlanta | 19:10 ET
Henderson Alvarez (N/A) faces Julio Teheran (95.1 IP, 96 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR). The former is making his first major-league start of the season after missing three months with a shoulder injury. There’s little information about his velocity, etc., over four rehab starts. Alvarez has averaged ca. 93 mph on his fastball as a major leaguer.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Radio.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.7.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Donovan Hand*	MIL	5	4	5	2	5	WAS	Taylor Jordan*	11:05
Ian Kennedy	AZ	3	2	4	5	5	NYN	Dillon Gee	13:10
Matt Cain	SF	6	6	6	3	6	CIN	Mike Leake	13:10
Cole Hamels	PHI	8	1	7	7	8	PIT	Gerrit Cole	13:35
Eric Stults	SD	4	7	6	7	7	BOS	Allen Webster*	13:35
Zach Britton	BAL	0	9	3	1	4	CHA	Jose Quintana	14:10
Ubaldo Jimenez	CLE	5	8	6	6	6	KC	James Shields	14:10
David Phelps	NYA	4	4	7	2	12	MIN	Kyle Gibson*	14:10
Chris Archer	TB	4	10	5	2	6	HOU	Jordan Lyles	14:10
Travis Wood	CHN	4	5	5	6	6	OAK	Dan Straily	16:05
Justin Verlander	DET	8	7	6	7	4	TOR	Esmil Rogers	19:07
Hen. Alvarez*	MIA	8	1	7	8	8	ATL	Julio Teheran	19:10
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	8	5	7	3	7	TEX	Martin Perez*	20:05
Chris Capuano	LAN	4	1	5	9	5	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	20:10
A. Wainwright	STL	9	4	7	6	7	LAA	Joe Blanton	21:05

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.