Why Wedge is Partly Wrong About Base Stealing

[The RotoTribe]

From the Akron Beacon Journal:
On Friday night, the Angels stole six bases against the Indians, but only one of those base runners reached the plate, and he would have scored anyway on a subsequent hit.

One-for-six isn't the normal ratio of steals to runs, but it emphasizes the point made by Indians manager Eric Wedge, who minimizes the importance of steals. According to Wedge (and he isn't the only one), unless a team can succeed at least 80 percent of the time, steals aren't much of a weapon.

Wege is right about the 80% rule, but he's wrong about minimizing stealing. In the early 'sixties, the Dodgers were basically a weak-hitting team, but because Maury Wills was such a great base-stealer, they "stole" many games.

Tribe hitters hit into so many double plays. It would be nice to steal more bases so that a hit to the right side of the infield or a bunt could get the runner to third with one out instead of no runners on with two outs.

The problem is, the Tribe is not blessed with great baserunners right now. Lawton and Vizquel, to be sure, but the rest of them are average at best. I don't know about Escobar, but so far, I have not been too impressed by him.

[Alex]

If a baserunner is altering a pitcher's pitch selection, and in the process making his pitches more predictable to the batter, than base runners AND THE THREAT of the steal do in fact matter.

I seem to recall that we moved a few runners over on the hit and ground out. I think we moved at least two runners over that way, and they may have ended up scoring.

What I like about our team is that no one in the line-up is particularly slow. All have at least average to above average speed. Sometimes those steals were supposed to be hit and run plays that went awry.