FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Skill and Variation

Phil Birnbaum reviews the baserunning series I've been writing at BP over at Sabermetric Research. I particularly appreciate his calling out my comments on true skill plus random variation which make up the results that I've published. I will likely be publishing the entire data set at some point so that more work can be done on sorting out the two.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While not exactly on topic, you might be interested to know that Juan Rivera appears to be closing in on a baserunning record. I can't find an official record for most consecutive times caught stealing, but Rivera is working on a streak of 12 straight and that's getting close to a record as far as I can tell.

Here's a list as complete as I can make since 1920:

Chris Cannizzaro 14, 1964-1970

Pete Runnels 13 (could be longer), 1951-52. Runnels started his career with 13 straight, and then was caught 4 more times in 7 attempts the next season, but the daily data is not available.

Eddie Yost 13, 1957-58

Zeb Terry 12 (could be longer), 1921. Zeb started 1921 with 12 straight before stealing a bag. In 1922 he went on to get nailed 11 times in 13 attempts, making him 3 for 27 over the two years. The daily data for 1920, when he was caught 16 times in 28 attempts, is not available.

Jay Buhner 12 1990-93


Some other possibilities, but don't have the daily data to check:
Charlie Jamieson, 5 SB in 30 attempts from 1928-29
Joe Sewell, 3 SB in 19 attempts in 1927
Red Kress, 6 SB in 28 attempts in 1930-31
Bill Knickerbocker, 7 SB in 33 attempts in 1935-36
Eddie Mayo 4 SB in 20 attempts in 1947-48.
Larry Gardner 3 SB in 23 attempts in 1920
Hod Ford 1 SB in 13 attempts in 1924-25
Bobby Doerr 6 SB in 26 attempts in 1938-39

So, Juan could very well be 3 away from breaking the record. Someone should recognize his efforts!