An ongoing article calculating the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays aggressiveness on the base paths.While a crude manner in which to measure steals (as it does not take into account outs, additional baserunners, occupation of second base, etc), SBA (Stolen Base Attempt Percentage) is the ‘industry standard’ in fantasy baseball circles when measuring team & individual player SB aggressiveness.
Upcoming
Another crude metric for speed is the Speed Score, developed by Bill James. This metric will be revisited in a June update, once sample sizes have grown.
Also on tap, base advancement.
For now, back into SBA.
The equation is
(Stolen Base Attempts) / (Singles+Walks+Hit by Pitch)
Note: Some use HBP, others don’t. Since an HBP gets a runner to 1st base, it will stay in this set of data
Toronto Blue Jays
Heading into the 2011 season, the message coming from the Jays was clear > We’re going to run.
For reference’s sake, the 2010 Jays had an SBA score of 6.03%. This means they attempted a steal roughly 6% of the time that the opportunity represented itself, using the admittedly flawed SBA equation. This placed the Jays near the bottom of the AL, 12th out of 14 teams. The 2010 AL average was 9.45%.
Moving onto the 2011 season
2011 SBA Data in table format – As of April 13th
2011 AL SBA Chart
(red = average, star = Jays)
The AL SBA or attempt average is 10.7%, the Median is 10.82%.
The Jays are slightly above the pack, averaging 11.93%, which is quite a gain from 2010.
Will it Continue?
Will the Jays continue to stay above the AL average in SBA? Also, how will the team end up placing in other metrics such as Speed Score?
These stats will be revisited in early June.
In the meantime you can:
A couple things: The bluejays have been caught in 3 run downs this year so far, on either blown hit and runs or pickoffs, and made it to the intended stolen base on every one of them. That luck is not gonna continue. This total skews how successfull they’ve been basestealing, they should really be 7/13 not 10/13 if it wasn’t for the incompetence of the other teams. Also i think how many the jays are picked off at first should also factor in somehow as this aggressive approach incourages the big lead, which leads to more pickoffs. In the end this aggressive approach does not look good, hopefully Farrell realize this and stops sending them so much and stops all the hit and runs, cause our guys are not making enough contact at the right times. Please someone else notice this.
I’d imagine the Jays will continue the running game until at least mid-season.
From an overall run scored standpoint, the Jays rank in the upper third of the AL.
Whether the running game ties into this or not is debatable. However, it’s hard to change, at least to this point from a runs scored perspective, a successful formula.
Why would they stop mid-season?
I should have fleshed out my reply a little better 🙂
Keep the running aggressiveness the same until the break. If the teams running into too many outs I could see them tapering things off
I’m fine with running once and while, but they’re trying way to hard to steal and hit and run, and soon this will be noticeable by the amount of outs added. WIth the power they have there is no reason to be stealing. OBP was our biggest issue last year, so the plan is to risk the guys that are actually getting on base?????