Beyond the Box Score: An SB Nation Community

Navigation: Jump to content areas:


Pro Quality. Fan Perspective.
Around SBN: The Record of Wrongs: Vanderbilt Commodores

Graph of the Day: Breaking Even on the Basepaths

It's common knowledge in sabermetric circles that it's not just the stolen base that's important, it's also the caught stealing.  A base stealer is only valuable if the impact of his successful steals outweighs the times he's caught. 

The rule of thumb is that you need to be successful close to 75% of the time in order for an attempted steal to be worth it.  This is determined by looking at the expected run value of the success and the failure and calculating what is known as the breakeven point.

Expected run value is an okay way to figure out the breakeven point, but a better one is by using win value. Using win value takes into account the fact that stolen bases attempts generally occur in situations that are more important than average.

Breakeven_points_14785_image001_medium

Update: I've had at least one request for the raw data, so I've posted it here for all that are interested.

Star-divide

As part of the preparation for my historical stolen base article at The Hardball Times, I calculated the actual average win value of both the stolen base and the caught stealing for each season the Retrosheet era (1954-2008).

This allowed me to figure out the breakeven point for each of those seasons and plot them on this graph.

Be a little bit careful in quoting these numbers though. For this to be the true breakeven point, we'd need to assume that managers and players have figured out the optimum times to run, which could be a poor assumption.

The proper way to do this (I think) is to figure out the breakeven point for each possible steal situation and then calculate the average by weighting how often each situation occurs.  

My guess is that the game on the field is closer to efficient than many like to think, so I think the actual numbers will be fairly close to the right answer.


References

The Win Expectancy and Leverage Index data is licenced from http://www.InsideTheBook.com

The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at "www.retrosheet.org".

0 recs  |  Comment 5 comments |

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Display:

Equation?

Good stuff. As the breakeven seems to track pretty well with the run scoring environment, is there an equation that will estimate the break-even point based on run scoring?

KJOK

by KJOK on Jun 22, 2009 12:59 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

So what's the average LI of stolen base attempts?

And could you group attempts by LI and find the success rate?

How difficult would this be:

The proper way to do this (I think) is to figure out the breakeven point for each possible steal situation and then calculate the average by weighting how often each situation occurs.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jun 22, 2009 1:08 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Dave Pinto asked if I could add actual success rate as well.. so here goes

Actual success rate was well below breakeven until the mid 60s, then tracked it pretty well for a while and has since gone well above.

by Dan Turkenkopf on Jun 22, 2009 7:57 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

ooh pretty graph

What’s with the success rat in the 1950’s?

St. Louis relievers... defying win expectancy since 2008
http://www.drivelinemechanics.com/

by vivaelpujols on Jun 22, 2009 9:10 PM EDT up reply actions   0 recs

Comments For This Post Are Closed


User Tools

We use numbers and stuff.
Community Guidelines
Why be a member?
Start posting on Beyond the Box Score »

Join SB Nation and dive into communities focused on all your favorite teams.

FanPosts

Community blog posts and discussion.

Recommended FanPosts

770insig_small
BtB's "Ball On A Budget" Fantasy League - Discuss Participants, Payrolls and Position Eligibility

Recent FanPosts

Ds9_small
good graphing program?
Small
Predicting HR/FB Rates
Leopold_butter_scotch_southpark_small
Troy Tulowitzki vs Ryan Braun
Small
Pitchers batted ball observations
Small
Eric Byrnes: A player worth a look?
Small
Valverde Is Charging Detroit Double
Mukuro_small
Another question: About power rankings
Small
Why You Shouldn't Trade for Arroyo
Jinaz-reds-avatar_small
Last Call for BtB Sabermetric Writing Award Nominations

+ New FanPost All FanPosts >

FanShots

Quick hits of video, photos, quotes, chats, links and lists that you find around the web.

Recent FanShots

Can you spot the five guys NOT in the Hall of Fame? It's easy, I separated 'em for ya. :)

Here's the full post about guys elected to the Hall of Fame primarily for their defense. Guys like Brooks Robinson, Ozzie Smith, Bobby Wallace, John Ward, and Bid McPhee stand up as definite HOFers, with many others worthy of debate (and a couple aren't worth any debate at all).

I almost made it through the whole post without comparing some HOFers to our friends Bill Dahlen, Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich, Alan Trammell, and Ron Santo. Almost.
If you care about newspaper coverage of MLB, read this post
Visualizing the Difference Between Offensive and Defensive Value for Catchers
First B-Pro and now ESPN. Tommy, you're growing up so fast
THT - Advancing by ground
Negro League Museum Close to Folding
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one...
Ranking Minor League Systems Using Victors Wang's Prospect Valuations
Pitch f/x on Ricky Nolasco Stretch vs. Windup again
Veron Wells the artist.  I never knew.

http://www.vwellsart.com/

+ New FanShot All FanShots >

BtB on Twitter

Main Feed: @BtBScore

Jeff: @jeffwzimmerman
Steve: @steve_sommer
Sky: @BtB_Sky
Dan: @dturkenk
Harry: @harrypav
Jinaz: @jinazreds
Jack: @jh_moore
Erik: @Erik_Manning
Tommy R: @trancel
Justin: @justinbopp

Subscribe to BtB via Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

BtB Goes Social


Managers

Wbc_029_small Jeff Sullivan

Editors

Rawlings_baseball_bigger_small Dan Turkenkopf

Limes_125_small Sky Kalkman

770insig_small Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal)

Aviles_small Justin Bopp

Authors

Roots_game_small R.J. Anderson

Jinaz-reds-avatar_small JinAZ

Face_small Harry Pavlidis

1753738656_110919ebe9_o_small vivaelpujols

Ozzie_small erik

Raysring1_small Tommy Rancel

Redcap_small SFiercex4

St_louis_cardinals_ce1141_003263_small stevesommer05

Paige_small Satchel Price