Base stealing revisted

[Hertston]

I posted about my tribulations with Jackie before, but my current position is even worse. In my current team, I have only one player seemingly capable of stealing well enough to even be worth trying it, Eddie Collins standing with one day to go at a respectable 47-15 SB/CS. Obviously, the one-legged hitters are prohibited from stealing at all, but whatever slider combinations I try, I can't get players such as Trout, Rodriguez, Griffey and Brett to steal at a profit no matter how much I limit their attempts to try. Even Gwynn (87/86/89) can't get a decent number of SB without half as many CS as well.

Am I actually doing something wrong, or is it simply not possible at diamond level to steal effectively unless baserunning skills are above 90 or even 100? If so, isn't that a problem with the model? Surely there would be opportunities for the discriminating runner even if facing an entire team of 'gold gloves'?

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by Hertston

I posted about my tribulations with Jackie before, but my current position is even worse. In my current team, I have only one player seemingly capable of stealing well enough to even be worth trying it, Eddie Collins standing with one day to go at a respectable 47-15 SB/CS. Obviously, the one-legged hitters are prohibited from stealing at all, but whatever slider combinations I try, I can't get players such as Trout, Rodriguez, Griffey and Brett to steal at a profit no matter how much I limit their attempts to try. Even Gwynn (87/86/89) can't get a decent number of SB without half as many CS as well.

Am I actually doing something wrong, or is it simply not possible at diamond level to steal effectively unless baserunning skills are above 90 or even 100? If so, isn't that a problem with the model? Surely there would be opportunities for the discriminating runner even if facing an entire team of 'gold gloves'?

I’m sure that I could manage it more closely but I simply have my strategy set on Moderate Sabermetric and I have a few guys who steal well. Jackie and Gwynn should just stop running (12 of 22 and 19 of 31 respectively) but I have Billy Hamilton at 27 of 30, Eddie Collins stealing 30 of 39, and Tris Speaker with 58 of 69. Even Ivan Rodriguez is 9 of 13. I’m rooting for him to get to double digits. Overall my team is sitting at 171 of 238 for a respectable 72%.

[Hwilensky]

I also think its harder to steal in diamond because everyone's catcher has an arm of 90 or better, leading to more caught stealing.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by Hwilensky

I also think its harder to steal in diamond because everyone's catcher has an arm of 90 or better, leading to more caught stealing.

I agree, the problem being that hitters base-running skills simply don't scale up with each new card set in the same way that pitcher, fielder and especially catcher skills at throwing them out do. Consequently, with each new set, there are fewer players in a 'best' line-up able to effectively steal.

[ncap99]

I use moderate sabermetric as my baseline as well, and anyone with under 80 speed/basestealing I drag the slider all the way to the left in their player settings. 80-95 or so I leave it alone and 95+ I move it up a bit.

Honestly the worst guys are people like Gwynn who have enough skill to attempt a lot but not enough to pull it off at a high enough rate for it to add value (often times the opposite).

Even with those settings I was 5th overall in my league in SB, going 218 for 266 (82% success rate). The sabermetric "rule of thumb" on SBs is you need to have a higher than 70% success rate for it to add runs overall. I had 3 players account for 186 of those 218 SBs - Tris Speaker (63 for 75 for 84%), Eddie Collins (74 out of 90 for 82%) and Billy Hamilton (49 out of 56 for 88%). The rest of the team was 32 for 45 on the remaining attempts for a 71% success rate.

Collins is 99/101, Speaker is 98/100, Hamilton is 96/106. I'd say 95+ in both basestealing and speed is a requirement for me personally to make it worth stealing in diamond+ where most people are running Pudge.

[chazzycat]

Can confirm Gwynn needs to be turned all the way down. I made the mistake of setting his slider 1 spot to the right and he made me pay.

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by Hertston

I agree, the problem being that hitters base-running skills simply don't scale up with each new card set in the same way that pitcher, fielder and especially catcher skills at throwing them out do. Consequently, with each new set, there are fewer players in a 'best' line-up able to effectively steal.

It would be interesting to push speed as a team option and see how it does. Unfortunately there are very few players with 95+ in both speed and baserunning. I'm sure there are a few I'm missing here but these are the 100s I know about:

Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Billy Hamilton, Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, Jack Glasscock, Jacoby Ellsbury and Ty Cobb. Of those I think only Ellsbury is completely unplayable, although Raines and Glasscock are real stretches and unfortunately Rickey didn't get much time in the sun with some pretty great LF options - I think he could still platoon there and be ok. Speaker, Cobb and Collins can be full time starters and Hamilton is an excellent LF platoon mate.

If you go to 90/90 speed/stealing you get Jose Cruz, NL Jackie and Joe Morgan and Honus Wagner as options.

So maybe something like:
C: Rodriguez (72 speed 72 stealing)
1B: Rod Carew (84 speed 82 stealing) or Roger Connor (77/88)
2B: Collins (99 speed, 101 stealing)
3B: SE Jackie (85 speed 91 stealing)
SS: Wagner (90 speed 92 stealing) or Bert Campaneris (97/91)
LF: Hamilton/Henderson platoon (96/106 and 111/106 respectively)
CF: Speaker (98 speed 100 stealing)
RF: Cobb (better at CF but has RF eligibility - 102 speed 103 stealing)
DH: Raines/Cruz (97/104 and 95/94 respectively)
Pinch Runner: I had to laugh at this one - Ice Box Chamberlain is 91 speed and 103 stealing. There are better options for sure like Cool Papa Bell for pinch running but it would just be funny.

The defense isn't terrible on this team but there are some weak spots for sure. Obviously Cobb, Connor and Wagner are a big task to acquire at least for a while.

If you want to dip below perfects you have some other options:
Willie Wilson 94 overall (LF/CF) - 99 speed 106 stealing
Cesar Cedeno 97 overall (CF) - 99 speed 95 stealing
Cool Papa Bell 99 overall (OF) - 117 speed 109 stealing
Pop Lloyd 99 overall (IF, RF) - 100 speed 92 stealing
George Sisler 95 overall (1B) - 91 speed 91 stealing
Maury Wills 94 overall (SS/3B) - 100 speed 91 stealing
Jake Stenzel 99 overall (DH) - 95 speed 105 stealing

I am sure I missed a bunch of players since I'm just looking at who I own and the player search in my league.

If I had the players I would definitely give it a try for a season.

[Thalion]

I run a base-stealing focused team and have a lot of fun doing it. It's entirely possible to stay competitive in Diamond League with one. I even made a short lived appearance in PeL (which didn't go well).

Stolen bases are down on an individual team basis in the higher leagues because of the improvement in Catcher Arm (I'm looking DIRECTLY at you, Pudge) and because good base stealers are being spread out among the league.

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by Thalion

I run a base-stealing focused team and have a lot of fun doing it. It's entirely possible to stay competitive in Diamond League with one. I even made a short lived appearance in PeL (which didn't go well).

Stolen bases are down on an individual team basis in the higher leagues because of the improvement in Catcher Arm (I'm looking DIRECTLY at you, Pudge) and because good base stealers are being spread out among the league.

Yep the ease of getting Pudge really pushed a lot of players out of the efficient-enough-to-be-useful basestealer pool. But even with him the really good ones are still really good at it unless you go nuts with your sliders.

[Fenixdown]

So this is a fun topic. I love base stealing. And I love players who can steal bases. And I have a lot of teams that very typically finish top 3-5 in season SB (albeit in silver, but you can only work with what you're in).

I always set individual strategies for batters. What I do is this. For every 10 points in a category, move the dial up from bottom to top one click. The dial starts at "50" if you move it all the way either way, it's five clicks to reach max/min. So, with baserunning on Pudge, as a good example (because I have him), both his base stealing and base running are up two clicks from average. As a result, in 436 GP, he's 114 for 160 in basestealing career (a 71.2% clip, which pretty much matches with his ratings when you think about it).

HOWEVER...the thing that helps Pudge the MOST (because he's also my leadoff hitter) is the fact that the two bats behind him in the order are Caminiti and A-Rod, both with 100+ contact. Their H&R dials are maxed as a result, so he gets a ton of opportunities to run. I should also add that the hitter who bats behind him, Ian Kinsler (if you haven't figured out the theme of this team yet...) in the same stretch that I've had Pudge hitting leadoff, is 117 for 158 in stealing (74.1%), also pretty much in line with his stealing of 81 and baserunning of 77.

Basically, it comes down to two factors, not one. One, does their dial match their ability, and two, do the hitters behind them help increase that ability or detract from it? You wouldn't want someone with a low contact hitting behind, say, Ozzie Smith or Rickey Henderson or Ty Cobb. And you should always factor in the next two batters, not just the one directly behind. Hope that helps!

[ncap99]

When I get punted back to diamond after this week in PeL, I'm going to try and build a team that focused on stealing as many bases as possible for a season for the fun of it. I have been wanting an excuse to use Rickey Henderson after I pulled him a few weeks back!

[Hertston]

I just don't get this game, sometimes. This week, to date, I have Speaker, Collins and Hamilton going at 34-6, 30-6 and 26-3 (!) respectively. Even Jackie is 8-1 (on fewer AB). I'm doing nothing differently in the settings from what I've tried before.

Go figure .

[Socali]

Unless I missed it, this discussion should not go without mentioning the pitcher's ability to hold runners. That and great catcher arm is detrimental to SB success.

[diamond3017]

In my experience, a player's speed rating has as large an effect on how much he tries to steal as his baserunning sliders. This has a weird effect on players whose speed is high but don't have a great stealing rating.

For example, I have Oscar Charleston one click away from "never" stealing bases (override team strategy), and he still attempts anywhere from 30-60 steals per year. This is tolerable for now because his success rate is just under 75%.

But, there is no way to get him to try to steal less than that unless I crank the stealing slider all the way to "never", in which case he will actually never try to steal a base. So you can't really make him attempt, say, 20 steals over the course of the season. Which is too bad, because a player with 86 stealing ability could be an efficient base-stealer at that volume of steals.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by Socali

Unless I missed it, this discussion should not go without mentioning the pitcher's ability to hold runners. That and great catcher arm is detrimental to SB success.

It is, but at least hold runners is not an ability that scales up with the pitchers' level in the chain, and even the best available vary considerably in that regard. Catcher arm, on the other hand, does scale up and the fact everyone is playing Pudge much of the time especially does seem to limit opportunities of SB success to only a few elite base stealers.

I have no idea whether the algorithm the game uses in deciding whether a runner should attempt to steal takes account of assumed 'knowledge' of a pitcher's hold runners prowess or not?

[Socali]

Originally Posted by Hertston

I have no idea whether the algorithm the game uses in deciding whether a runner should attempt to steal takes account of assumed 'knowledge' of a pitcher's hold runners prowess or not?

Every pitcher in OOTP has a hold rating that should correlate some to stolen base attempts. The higher the hold rating would result in more pickoffs attempts of a runner from the base where when successful would eliminate the runner, hence SB's and SBA. (of course it is an SBA if runner is going)

If you make a report of your starting pitchers, each pitchers hold rating, SB allowed and caught stealing and equalize them by batters faced and OBP you will find less SBA as a percentage with higher hold ratings than the lower hold rated pitchers.

(Equalizing would be factoring that great OOTP pitchers allow fewer baserunners to begin with.)

Which is what I did with my only PT22 team. The most accurate measurement would be to equalize data in SB situations and particular catchers. But OOTP doesn't give us that detail in a report you would have to manually get those numbers. Without that I crudely attempted to equalize SBA with pitcher's OBP: SBA/(BF(batters faced) x OBP.

Which gave me:
Pitchers with hold rating of <50 = 16% SBA/OBP
Pitchers with hold rating of >50 = 12% SBA/OBP

I also did a formula with: (SBA/singles allowed by pitcher) and got this:
Pitchers with hold rating of <50 = 32% SBA/1B
Pitchers with hold rating of >50 = 22% SBA/1B

The catchers were Mauer(91 arm) and Carter(97 arm).

I know those are not accurate as we need to calculate SB situations only but without painstakingly getting that data I do believe the formulas above give us an essence of correlation with SBA and pitchers hold rating.

I agree that a league full of Pudge Rodriguez is the dominant hindrance to SBA. I had one season in diamond with the only PT22 team I have and that certainly was true there. But there were a lot of Lefties with pretty good hold ratings and some righties too, think Walsh (97 hold).

This article relates the obvious for RL baseball, "Upsetting the timing and comfort of a runner can go a long way to prohibiting them from stealing bases...". The hold rating in OOTP should correlate to that.

In choosing pitchers all else being equal hold ratings can be a tie breaker for me.

Cheers, have fun!

[Socali]

BTW...I don't mean to ignore your reference to scaling up, I understand what you are saying. When you have Pudge on almost every team it skews the point I am making. All I'm suggesting is that whatever the catcher rating at any level the SBA % should correlate some to higher/lower pitcher hold rating.

I casually follow it for myself but maybe there is someone who really tracks this and has hard data to prove, disprove or make my point negligible.

And outside of what might seem to be true in RL baseball how it is coded in OOTP is all that matters here.

[Hertston]

Many thanks for the thoughts and analysis. Having both seen my division this year and being severely PP skint, I think I might try a season of all-out smallball using players I already have. Should be good for a laugh anyway .