a word to moneyball purists about Beltran

[GotowarMissAgnes]

i basically agree with what Magney said, but at the same time, it's tough to quantify how distracted a pitcher by certian players with higher propensities to run.

for instance, and interesting study would be to check, say, the rays's #2 hitter's BA when crawford is on first vs. when he is not on first. at least some of that difference could be attributable to his abilty to steal 2nd, and thus should be factored in to the bennefits of his steals. so, IMO, you can probably get away with a success rate slightly blow 75 and still have a net gain provided the speedster has enough of a reputation to throw pitchers off their rhythme.

Actually, there have been studies on the impact of stealers on hitters and it's opposite to what you suppose. Hitters have POORER performance when there's a stealer on base than when he's not. One guess as to why that is so is that the base runner is just as or even more distracting to the hitter, since that runner leads to those annoying pick-off throws that disturb your rhythm and timing and also is moving in your field of vision as you try to hit, disturbing your concentration.

I'll see if the studies I've seen are online and try to post links.

[GotowarMissAgnes]

Here's one of the things I was thinking of, though it doesn't really present the stats. This is DiamondMind's look at Ichiro's value, in which they looked at the performance of hitters batting after him.

http://www.diamond-mind.com/articles/ichiro.htm

A couple things to keep in mind...

All hitters tend to hit better with a runner on base, in part because the fact that a runner is on base means that they are facing an inferior pitcher. So, the appropriate comparison is how hitters hit when there is a speedy guy on first (or another base) versus how they hit when it's some plodder.

[LBJackal]

Good article, thanks

I like this part:

"Suppose Ichiro lines a ball into the gap, where it's cut off by the right fielder, but not before Ichiro can use his speed to stretch that single into a double. The better offensive metrics would give Ichiro credit for a typical double, meaning that he gets credit for (a) not making an out, (b) advancing himself to second base, and (c) advancing other runners by the number of bases typically taken on a double, which is often two but sometimes three.

When Ichiro legs out a borderline double, however, it's always a two-base advance for the other runners, meaning that his doubles aren't worth quite as much as the average. The same is true of an infield single -- Ichiro gets full credit for a single, but an infield single almost never scores a runner from second, while many other singles do"

It doesn't get noticed a lot, but it's true that his singles and doubles might not be worth as much as others' singles and doubles. The doubles thing probably doens't affect much, but I imagine he gets a lot fo singles with a guy on second who doesn't score. I wonder if that can be measured The % of runners who score from second base on a certain players singles. Hmmmm.