Stop. Trying. To. Steal. Bases.

[Lefty]

Yeah I'm trying to listen to the podcast they have of the show after WYC but I can't seem to find him reading it. Eh.

And I'm pretty sure I just got punked....I've been scouring the B&B podcasts from today and can't find what bolter is talking about. If this is the case, that was a mighty good one.

[stormbolter73]

I listened to the podcast of Who You Crappin' and it was the same and it was right after that. Is there a way to get the whole show and not just pieces? I couldn't find the last half hour of the show. I feel like i've punk'd myself at this point

[Lefty]

The last half-hour should be under "Hour 5" of the podcasts, and I don't know where to look for other sources. And I think the casts they posted are screwed up, because whenever I play any of the hours 2-4 all of the previous hours' casts are playing in the background. I dunno, maybe tomorrow it will get fixed. But damn, I wish I could hear it, Bernstein usually gives my stuff a pretty good read.

[Lefty]

Was doing some research, and I compiled a list of some "interesting" players Ozzie has asked to steal at least 10 bases in a given season throughout his tenure with the Sox:

-43 year old Omar Vizquel (2010, -1.03 EqSBR)
-Carl Everett ('05, -1.21)
-28 year old Carlos Lee ('04, -2.21)
-Jermaine Dye ('05, -0.31)
-Juan Uribe ('04, -5.23; '05, -2.56; '07, -4.59)
-34 year old Jose Valentin ('04, -1.39)

[DewsSox79]

Originally Posted by Lefty

Was doing some research, and I compiled a list of some "interesting" players Ozzie has asked to steal at least 10 bases in a given season throughout his tenure with the Sox:

-43 year old Omar Vizquel (2010, -1.03 EqSBR)
-Carl Everett ('05, -1.21)
-28 year old Carlos Lee ('04, -2.21)
-Jermaine Dye ('05, -0.31)
-Juan Uribe ('04, -5.23; '05, -2.56; '07, -4.59)
-34 year old Jose Valentin ('04, -1.39)

that hurt us pretty bad.

[Lefty]

Please. You are the king of punting the shit out of straw men.

[DewsSox79]

you hide behind this arguement because of your dislike of ozzie. I know your boy bernstein hates when people say "than you tell us who should coach" and you ride with him on that like everything else.

Instead of using that cop out, explain who should manage this team and why. and please for the love of christ stop saying you. you sound like every other sabre head on psd.

[DewsSox79]

01 twins 85-77
01 tigers 66-96
02 marlins 79-83
02 royals 62-100
03 marlins 91-71

1 more win would have done a whole lot of nothing in your list of "dubious" teams.

[Lefty]

Originally Posted by dewssox79

you hide behind this arguement because of your dislike of ozzie. I know your boy bernstein hates when people say "than you tell us who should coach" and you ride with him on that like everything else.

Actually, to my knowledge, Bernstein has repeatedly used the "well who should manage, then?" routine.

Instead of using that cop out, explain who should manage this team and why. and please for the love of christ stop saying you. you sound like every other sabre head on psd.

Why does it have to be a specific person? Why can't it be as simple as "someone who does not do those stupid things", regardless of the specifics of who and their motives for doing so?

Look at Arte Howe, he went from costing the A's about 8 runs on average every year from '96-'99, then when Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta started rolling and influencing on-field strategy, Howe's teams were nearly half a win better at base stealing every season from '00-'02. Then, Howe went to the Mets and averaged -0.1 stealing runs per season with a team that had averaged -15.8 stealing runs per season in the three years prior.

So, if for some reason you want a specific person, then Art Howe, but he is merely a placeholder for "someone that listens to and understands management when they say stealing so many bases in such bad situations is costing the team too many runs".

Originally Posted by dewssox79

01 twins 85-77
01 tigers 66-96
02 marlins 79-83
02 royals 62-100
03 marlins 91-71

1 more win would have done a whole lot of nothing in your list of "dubious" teams.

Not. The. Point. Jesus Christ.

[Lefty]

And dew, because you seem incapable of understanding this, I'll explain the meaning behind joining that dubious list of clubs as plainly as I can:

Since 2000, 30 MLB organizations have played 10 full seasons, making for 300 individual seasons played by the whole of MLB teams. Of those 300 individual seasons (herein labeled "teams"), only 5 teams (1.7%, though it will be 2% when the Sox join this club at the end of the season) have managed to have at least 200 SB opportunities but ended up costing themselves at lest one marginal win with how many times they got caught.

This small fraction of teams aren't the worst base-stealers of the decade, and many of them haven't come close to costing themselves the number of runs/wins other atrocious teams have by racking up huge totals in the CS column. However, the difference between those really bad stealing teams and these bad stealing teams is that for whatever reason, those really bad teams didn't try to steal more. As we have seen, teams can certainly rack up 200+ steal attempts in a given season, possibly even 250+ if they tried, but even those awful running teams didn't see fit to try to swipe bases at that rate. That implicitly means that at some point, those horrid running teams (we're talking -2 wins here) looked at a given base-out situation and nixed the idea of stealing a base, while that small sub-set of teams plugged along despite seeing from the dugout how many times they left their team in a far worse situation.

That kind of ignorance and defiance deserves to be set aside and specifically criticized at least as much as those teams that were just all-out bad at stealing bases. I'll let you make the rest of the connections here, but the starting point is: who can we reasonably attribute responsibility to for a team that steals whatever number of bases? The manager.