Daily Notes: Stolen Bases Converted into Distance

Table of Contents
The following is the table of contents for today’s Daily Notes.

1. Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
2. Regarding to What the Author is Listening
3. Rickey Henderson’s Base Stealing, Converted to Distance
4. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
5. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding Who the Heck the Author Is
The present author is David G Temple, i.e. me. I’m usually a contributor to NotGraphs, however Mr. Cistulli has trusted me with presenting the Daily Notes for this fine Saturday. My hopes are to a.) provide you with some interesting brain bits for your brain, and b.) prove my worth to my family, my friends, and myself.

Regarding to What the Author is Listening
It has become the case in the last week or so that I cannot seem to be productive in the morning without playing the following track at levels that will certainly damage my hearing. Today is no different.

Rickey Henderson’s Base Stealing, Converted to Distance
This idea came to me for no apparent reason, recently, and I threw the factoid out on Twitter: Rickey Henderson’s total successful steals (1,406) converts to traveling the equivalent of  nearly 24 miles (23.97). Add in the 335 times he was caught stealing — also the most in Major-League history — which would consist of him mostly traveling 90 feet anyway, and he traveled almost 30 miles (29.7) whilst attempting to steal a base. This is, of course, saying nothing about your run-of-the-mill, mom-and-pop base running. He covered nearly 30 miles just trying to steal.

Where do current players rank in this arbitrary measurement?

Is a question you are certainly not asking. Below is the top ten leaders in stolen bases with distances converted to miles, as well as kilometers for you ardent non-patriots.

Rank	Name	SB	Miles	Kilometers
1	Juan Pierre	609	10.38	16.71
2	Ichiro Suzuki	461	7.86	12.65
3	Carl Crawford	441	7.52	12.10
4	Jose Reyes	415	7.07	11.38
5	Jimmy Rollins	410	6.99	11.25
6	Derek Jeter	348	5.93	9.55
7	Alex Rodriguez	318	5.42	8.72
8	Rafael Furcal	314	5.35	8.61
9	Carlos Beltran	307	5.23	8.42
10	Michael Bourn	287	4.89	7.87

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Pirates at Angles | 22:00 ET
Francisco Liriano (he with 48 IP and a 78 xFIP-) takes on Jerome Williams (71. IP, 101 xFIP-). Sources tell me that the other players on the team will also be involved. Liriano may be of the most interest to the reader, since he used to be great then quite terrible and is now good again. His recent success can’t totally be explained by a career-high swing rate (46.5% vs. 44.7% career) and a career-low contact rate (69.0% vs. 72.7%), but this probably means something.

Reader’s Preferred Broadcast: LA Angels of A TV.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with my own NERD scores assigned. In this case, a pitchers NERD score indicates how many steals he’s allowed in miles, and the team’s NERD score indicates the career stolen bases in miles for the current members of each team.* Total NERD score is a simple average.

Note: the following table may not be entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Jhoulys Chacin	COL	.34	7.14	4.46	8.08	2.28	WAS	Dan Haren	12:05
Alex Colome	TBA	0	8.11	9.9	29.18	2.34	NYY	CC Sabathia	13:05
Mig. Gonzalez	BAL	.05	12.02	9.4	19.40	1	TOR	C.M. Wang	13:07
Bud Norris	HOU	.82	3.51	3.61	9.85	.24	CHC	Travis Wood	16:05
Jose Quintana	CHW	.20	8.81	4.71	9.41	.43	KCR	Wade Davis	14:10
Dillon Gee	NYM	.31	6.56	5.28	14.11	.14	PHI	Jon. Pettibone	16:05
Jacob Turner	MIA	.22	15.87	6.49	7.74	2.13	SFG	Barry Zito	16:05
Tim Hudson	ATL	1.72	10.13	5.60	10.53	.03	MIL	Donovan Hand	16:10
Allen Webster	BOS	0	11.81	5.11	7.64	1	DET	Max Scherzer	19:15
P.J. Walters	MIN	.15	3.92	4.41	13.30	.29	CLE	Corey Kluber	19:15
Dan Straily	OAK	.20	9.12	4.98	8.51	2.06	SEA	Aaron Harang	22:10
Martin Perez	TEX	.02	12.09	6.76	14.80	.14	STL	Shelby Miller	19:15
F. Liriano	PIT	1.21	8.34	4.71	8.44	.84	LAA	J. Williams	22:05
Mike Leake	CIN	.38	8.69	4.81	10.07	.09	ARI	Patrick Corbin	19:15
Zack Greinke	LAD	.92	22.65	8.77	10.03	1.48	SDP	E. Volquez	22:15

 

*Please note the totals are for the players’ entire career, not just what they amassed whilst on their current team.