The best base-stealer? ESPN.com’s Sean McAdam says Juan Pierre, and then quotes several unnamed MLB executives to back it up. Yes, they admit, he hasn’t stolen as many as Podsednik or Crawford over the past couple of years, but if you needed one base stolen, this is the man. Crazy? Take a look at last year’s numbers:
Pierre: 45 stolen bases, 24 caught stealing
Podsednik: 70 sb, 13 cs
Crawford: 59 sb, 15 cs
Don’t need to have an autographed copy of Moneyball to figure out something’s not right. We just hope (assume) Cash wasn’t one of those anonymous voices.
7 comments… add one
They are all wrong. Best base stealer: Dave Roberts, and don’t you Yankees fans forget it!
We certainly don’t forget.
Dave Roberts 2004: 38 sb, 3 cs
And clearly clutch.
Any GM who takes Pierre over these guys purely for base-stealing deserves a trip to The Donald’s boardroom.
Carlos Beltran anyone??
Carlos Beltran for sure: 42 sb, 3 cs.
Gosh, take a peek at the stats and whole cast of characters make more sense than Mr. Pierre. Let’s not forget Bobby Abreu (40/5).
We’re forced to question the entire premise of ESPN’s “Hot Stove Heaters” concept, which seems designed to reify conventional wisdom at the expense of serious analysis.
YF’s last comment seems quite apt, and with a little more objectivity he might have come to the same conclusion following his post about Tim Kurkjian’s Jeter column.
Backhanded compliment of the day, Ouch. I think we needed to see a couple of these things to fully get a handle on their (utter lack of a) methodology. Is Jeter the best baserunner? Well, he’s a great baserunner. But it would have been nice to see at least some kind of attempt to quantify what that means, and compare it to other players. A ratio of total-bases-minus-home-runs to outs-on-the-bases? I’m not quite sure how to track “baserunning,” but some effort would have been better than none.