Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 04, 2003
Valentine on Baserunning

Daniel Shamah writes:


Bobby Valentine made possibly the most intelligent comment I've heard in a long time on Baseball Tonight this evening.

Discussing Trachsel's two pickoffs against the Cubs, Valentine noted that he felt that baserunning has gotten poorer recently. He then proceeded to say that until sabermetricians (his word!!) figure out a metric to analyze the offensive value of someone moving from first to third on a single, or someone advancing on a groundout, we'll never REALLY know how valuable good baserunning is. He described it, hesistently, as a fundamental (he even said that he hates the phrase "baseball fundamentals") part of baseball, and there are too many teams that just run themselves out of rallies, and that it was nothing more than his baseball instincts that suggested to him that too many teams are guilty of bad baserunning.

I literally watched my television agape. Valentine?! You know, the first few times I saw I figured ESPN hired him because he's a recognizable name and he's very personable on the air. But after that bit, I don't know...sabermetrics?! WOW.


Valentine is a smart guy. I always thought his weakness as a manager was his own ego. That actually works for television; you have to have supreme confidence in yourself to put your thoughts in front of millions of people every night.

As for baserunning, I don't know if it's any worse than it's ever been. Certainly, defenses have adjusted with pitchers going to slide steps. The running game has also degraded because in eras of high power, the SB becomes less valuable, and therefore, it's not used as much. Why risk stealing 2nd if the guy at the plate can jack the ball out of the park?

As for Sabrmetricians putting a value on going from first to third, Bobby's a bit behind the times here. I'd point him to The Hidden Game of Baseball by Thorn and Palmer, published in the 1980's. They have a chart in that book showing the run potential for each base/out situation. You can use that to calculate the value of any advancement or any 1-run strategy. In general, not making an out is much more important than gaining a base.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:46 AM | Offense | TrackBack (0)