When Do the Mets Run?

by Rob Castellano on Mar 10, 2009 1:30 PM EDT

I recently had the unfortunate experience of watching a Mets game with a Yankee fan friend. So the announcers are talking about Beltran's baserunning prowess, citing his incredible success rates and my friend says that's "because he only runs in easy situations when he knows he'll make it" and because he "pads his stats in blowouts". Now I've heard this blasphemous myth before and inspired by an interesting post about Ichiro and baserunning, I decided to look more into when the Mets top base thieves, Beltran and Jose, run in terms of situational pressure (or leverage).

Baseball-Reference.com provides some handy leverage splits, with each player's numbers getting separated into High Leverage (1.5+ LI), Medium Leverage (0.7-1.5 LI), and Low Leverage (below 0.7 LI) situations. We'll start with Jose compared with the NL average:

Reyes		NL
	%Attempts	%Success	%Attempts	%Success
High Leverage	22.8%	81.9%	30.3%	75.1%
Medium Leverage	59.7%	80.6%	49.3%	71.2%
Low Leverage	17.4%	74.6%	20.3%	74.3%

And here are a few of the league's other top base stealers compared with Beltran:

Ichiro		Rollins
	%Attempts	%Success	%Attempts	%Success
High Leverage	26.0%	80.0%	24.4%	83.9%
Medium Leverage	54.3%	80.9%	58.1%	83.1%
Low Leverage	19.7%	86.8%	17.4%	80.6%

Beltran		Crawford
	%Attempts	%Success	%Attempts	%Success
High Leverage	30.8%	90.6%	24.0%	85.2%
Medium Leverage	47.4%	84.5%	57.7%	84.3%
Low Leverage	21.8%	92.6%	18.3%	73.3%

Graphically (click to enlarge):

So much for Beltran only running when it doesn't count. That myth about padding his stats is just that, a myth (probably created by jealous Yankee fans). Beltran not only runs more than most in high pressure situations, he is successful more than most as well.

Jose is much more in line with the average base thief. He actually runs a bit less in tight situations but a bit more in medium leverage spots. Hes definitely not padding stats with that 17% low leverage rate. His success rates are in line, if not a little lower, than top base stealers also. However, Jose is a bit of a special case because of the sheer # of steals and especially because nobody's base-stealing rep. precedes him more than Jose. If throws over to first were actually measured I'm pretty confident that Jose would have twice as many as anyone in baseball, especially in those high leverage situations, explaining that lower percentage.

The underlying theme here, the one thing to take away from all this, Carlos Beltran is an incredible base stealer.

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Comments

I love Carlos Beltran

and I don’t understand anyone who doesn’t. The strangest thing is that he’s the rare player who looks great whether you’re a SABR person or a purely “watching the game” type person – I mean, the guy has one of the smoothest swings in the game, he runs like a gazelle, and he plays a brilliant Centerfield. Yet people still hate him, all b/c of one damn at-bat. It boggles my mind.

by cjmulrain on Mar 10, 2009 1:59 AM EDT reply actions

I concur.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Mar 10, 2009 8:10 AM EDT up reply actions

Hmmm...

I think the problem with what you did above is that you’re looking at the proportion of attempts that came in certain situations, rather than the likelihood of stealing in certain situations. I mean, if Beltran is prone to walking in high LI situations and he’s on first base a lot in such situations, then logically a high number of his SB attempts will also be in such situations even if he’s not any more likely to attempt to steal.

What I’d like to see is attempt frequency statistics – the number of SB attempts in a given situation divided by the number opportunities to make an SB attempt in that situation (roughly equal to the number of times on base with a base empty in front of the player in that situation). I suspect the results would probably be similar to what you arrived at above, but it’d be closer to telling us what we’re actually looking for.

by JoshNY on Mar 10, 2009 9:07 AM EDT reply actions

yeah but

because determining when he did and didn’t have a man on in front of him isn’t possible (or at least practical) those #‘s are nearly impossible to nail down. now if you want to ignore those situations when theres a man on base (which kind of invalidates the whole thing) he goes 22% of the time in high leverage spots, 16.3% of medium leverage situations and only 6.6% of the time in low leverage spots. again, those #’s are almost definitely very skewed.

by Rob Castellano on Mar 10, 2009 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions

yeah

I realize that you’d really have to do a fine-toothed-comb sort of pass through every time on base to figure out whether they qualified and that’s not really practical. But what you just posted is very interesting and certainly tends to invalidate what your friend said about Beltran.

by JoshNY on Mar 10, 2009 11:14 AM EDT up reply actions

Good stuff

I saw that Lookout Landing post and wondered how Reyes and Beltran’s stolen base stats were in different situations

by James Kannengieser on Mar 10, 2009 10:05 AM EDT reply actions

Right!

By the way, I just realized that my earlier post sounded like criticism when it wasn’t intended to be that way; this is great information and I was merely trying to suggest a way to make it better.

I find it interesting (but ultimately somewhat intuitive) that runners succeed overall at a better rate in high-leverage and low-leverage situations than they do in medium-leverage ones. My hunch is that there’s an element of surprise for stealing in those (high-leverage: “great, you’re on base, now don’t do anything stupid and cost us this game, just let the guy hitting behind you do his job”; low-leverage: “don’t be a dick and steal a base when your team is already up eight runs, it’s tacky” or “you’re way behind, there’s no reason to steal, what your team needs is just to keep putting guys on base”) that there isn’t in situations in the middle ground.

by JoshNY on Mar 10, 2009 11:12 AM EDT up reply actions

I look at it more

that the base stealer is going to be more carefully picking his spots in high-leverage situations, whereas in medium-leverage he might be more willing to take a chance to try to “make something happen” so to speak. Not that it’s a big difference, but it seems like you’re looking at stolen base percentage as being indicative of the attention levels of the pitcher and catcher, I’m looking at it as the judgment of the baserunner (and obviously, both factor in with each other).

by cjmulrain on Mar 10, 2009 11:22 AM EDT up reply actions

that's a good point

I guess it really is likely to be a combination of the two.

by JoshNY on Mar 10, 2009 12:57 PM EDT up reply actions

except Crawford & Reyes

They’re league-average or worse in low leverage situations. They both make a big fraction of their CS outs in low leverage.

My suspicion is it’s due to the pitcher being more free to pitch out or throw over in low leverage. In high leverage, you’re supposed to “just focus on the hitter.”

by hotspur on Mar 10, 2009 3:55 PM EDT up reply actions

beltran

for another touchdown

HELLO HELLO MR WILPON. WE WANT THE MANSION NOT THE CONDO.

by kendynamo on Mar 10, 2009 12:24 PM EDT reply actions

It appears to me that Beltran steals 3rd more often then most as well (and rarely gets caught d/t the element of surprise) and while they might not show up as"high leverage," if they come with less than 2 outs they’d be productive.

Do the stats include steals of 3rd vs. 2nd?

by HotChipWillBreakYourLegs on Mar 10, 2009 2:09 PM EDT reply actions

no

i don’t know of any resource that differentiates between stealing 2nd and 3rd (without actually going into gamelogs) but that would be interesting to know. same as the amount of pickoff attempts on a specific baserunner in a season and the opportunities a player has to steal with clogged base situations filtered out (though i think BP may do this on their baserunning stats page here: href=“http://baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=422407” but i can’t quite decipher it so maybe not).

by Rob Castellano on Mar 11, 2009 11:54 AM EDT up reply actions

This is why...

…I love this site. Informative and intelligent analysts and intelligent discussion in the comments section.

by djbutler73 on Mar 10, 2009 7:03 PM EDT reply actions

When do the Mets run?

September time isn’t it?
I kid I kid…just pre-empting a moron Phillies phan.
World Champions dont you know!

by Ohpityme on Mar 12, 2009 10:47 AM EDT reply actions

I believe you mean...

World Phuckin Champtions.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Mar 12, 2009 5:27 PM EDT up reply actions

This is true

That misspelling is now ascribed to every single Phillies fan in the world. They deserve only so much.

'Oh yes, I know all about that duty-of-a-citizen stuff. It doesn't go. There are exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. When a man risks his liberty to come and root at a ball-game, you've got to hand it to him. He isn't a crook. He's a fan.'

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Mar 12, 2009 7:10 PM EDT up reply actions

I hate Beltran for reasons that pre-date his employment with the Mets (he pretty much took a dump on the entire city of Atlanta during the 2004 NLCS), but the guy is damn good. Interesting article, glad you shared.

by Smoltz's Beard on Mar 17, 2009 12:41 PM EDT reply actions