My column today on Baseball Prospectus revolved around the double steal and tackling questions like how often it's been employed, how successfully, and whether that tracks with what is optimum from a strategic perspective. While there are some issues with the underlying play by play data that make it difficult to count all such attempts, we can get pretty close. One of the tables I left out of that article was the career numbers for the current crop of managers. The following table lists the 30 managers from 2006 and their career numbers on double steals.
Note: A successful double steal is one in which both runners are credited with a stolen base or neither runner is put out.
Name Years Succ Att Pct Att/Yr
Ken Macha 4 5 5 1.000 1.3
Terry Francona 6 12 13 0.923 2.2
Mike Scioscia 7 43 48 0.896 6.9
Willie Randolph 2 14 16 0.875 8.0
Charlie Manuel 5 15 18 0.833 3.6
Joe Girardi 1 5 6 0.833 6.0
Sam Perlozzo 2 9 11 0.818 5.5
Ned Yost 4 8 10 0.800 2.5
Jerry Narron 4 20 26 0.769 6.5
Bob Melvin 4 19 25 0.760 6.3
Jim Tracy 6 15 20 0.750 3.3
Phil Garner 13 24 32 0.750 2.5
Tony LaRussa 28 160 219 0.731 7.8
Grady Little 3 5 7 0.714 2.3
Ron Gardenhire 5 22 31 0.710 6.2
Mike Hargrove 14 87 124 0.702 8.9
Felipe Alou 13 56 80 0.700 6.2
Joe Torre 24 111 165 0.673 6.9
Buddy Bell 8 39 58 0.672 7.3
Bruce Bochy 11 51 76 0.671 6.9
Jim Leyland 14 67 101 0.663 7.2
Bobby Cox 24 61 92 0.663 3.8
Clint Hurdle 5 9 14 0.643 2.8
Ozzie Guillen 3 7 11 0.636 3.7
Buck Showalter 10 18 29 0.621 2.9
Dusty Baker 13 27 45 0.600 3.5
John Gibbons 3 7 12 0.583 4.0
Eric Wedge 4 9 17 0.529 4.3
Frank Robinson 16 46 92 0.500 5.8
Joe Maddon 2 3 6 0.500 3.0
In this current crop of managers Mike Scioscia is by far the leader in terms of success and in 2006 was 13 for 13. Both Mike Hargrove and Willie Randolph have called for 8 or more per season and Tony LaRussa is close at 7.8. Lou Pinella wasn't included in this list since he didn't manage in 2006 but historically he is 111 for 160 in his 18 years for a .694 percentage and averaging 8.9 attempts per season. Cubs fans should expect a few double steals in 2006. Let's just hope they come with a few wins as well.
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2 comments:
Dan, if you check my blog that links to your BP article, you will see a couple of comments by readers on the success rate with 2 outs.
Yeah, if one runner is caught stealing then the other runner doesn’t get credit for a stolen base per rule 10.08. So in order to catch those scenarios I was looking for advancement by the runners but what I assume is that with two outs the scorers don’t usually record the other runner’s advancement as they do with less than 2 outs. They do occasionally though and that’s what led me astray. This is another example whether the play by play codes are not granular enough to tell you exactly what happened. Next week, I’ll talk about that and hopefully look at it again from a WX perspective. Thanks as always.
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