[Lefty]

I am sick of the White Sox running themselves into outs and out of innings. Hawk can't go a broadcast without telling us how great it is to finally be able to steal some bases, and he certainly won't miss a chance to point out that the Sox are currently second in the league in stolen bases, with Juan Pierre heading the top of the individual leaders list. While that sounds great on the surface, this rubbish doesn't stand up for two seconds if you know where to look and what to look for to accurately assess base-stealing prowess and value.

Yes, the Sox are second in the AL in SB's, but they are also leading the league in caught-stealing, with 65 runners thrown out trying to swipe a bag with the next-closest team being the Angels with 44 CS. This makes for a 66% stolen-base percentage, 3rd-worst in the AL and so far away from any theoretical break-even point it makes lauding the successful steals made by this team a comedic endeavor. According to the Baseball Prospectus statistic Equivalent Stolen Base Runs (EqSBR), this incarnation of an "Ozzieball" squad has cost itself almost 9.5 marginal runs so far this season (3rd-wost in the MLB) and are on-pace to cost themselves 1-or-more wins come October.

What's more, this team, if they stay their current course, is on pace to join a somewhat dubious class of ballclubs: they are about to join the '01 Twins, '01 Tigers, '02 Marlins, '02 Royals and '03 Marlins as the only teams in the last decade to record 200+ steal attempts in a season but cost themselves 10-or-more runs (equivalent to one win in nerd baseball) in a season. And since 2005, no team has had 200+ SB attempts and even come close to costing themselves one win in the standings.

As a stat-head, I understand that leveling criticism at a manager for sub-par performance in an area based off of one single metric can be a bit erroneous (firing a manager for "lack of wins" seems to be the most common of these). However, when looking at something like EqSBR, and really that facet of the game as a whole, it isn't much of a stretch (!!!) for criticisms of bad play to find their way back to the manager, because he is the only person on the team presumed to have direct control over that phase.

Of course, not all managers are involved in every base-stealing situation, just like they aren't involved in every situation in which they have presumed control. (bunting, defensive alignments, pitch selection and so-on), Many give the "green light" to a player before a season or series and sit back to focus on other things. That being said, when the bottom five players on your team in EqSBR--who have cost you almost 8 runs combined--have almost half of your SB attempts, there is little defense for charges of "managerial buffoonery". What's more, when three of those bottom-five players are named Omar Vizquel, Mark Teahen, and Alexei Ramirez (the other two being Gordon Beckham and Alex Rios), and when Mark Kotsay is asked to steal anything from anyone (4 steal attempts, -0.81 EqSBR), something is seriously wrong.

I cringed as much as the next "enlightened" baseball fan when Ozzie was said to finally have "his" team and was going to run it "his" way, but this kind of egregious run-costing--almost 55 runs across the whole of Ozzie's managerial tenure with the Sox--in one of the facets of the game Ozzie seemingly has direct control over has gone on long enough. I like some of the things that Ozzie does as a manager, but perhaps it's time to waive goodbye to the "Ozzieball", and perhaps just "Ozzie", era in Chicago.