ROB Trends
On the left hand side is the number of stolen base attempts, and on the right hand side is the ROB score. (If you’re not sure what I mean by ROB, the explanation can be found at Introducing ROB.)
As the graph clearly shows, players with a higher number of steal attempts will usually have a lower ROB ratio. Ever player over 50 attempts had a ROB under 3, and even players with as few as 10 attempts seemed to have a low ROB score.
Seeing this, I ran a few tests with players that had 10 or more, 10 or fewer and over 20 steal attempts. Results;
| Steal Criteria | # of Players | ROB Value |
| >10 Steals | 102 | 2.90 |
| <10 Steals | 153 | 3.53 |
| 20 or > Steals | 46 | 2.72 |
The players with 10 or more attempts scored at a much higher rate than those without the attempts. I was originally surprised by the slight difference between the 10+ and 20+ groups but after thinking about it a little, it does make sense. There are many players that have the ability to steal a base, but are €œheld down€ to a point, by their respective teams sabermetric and even (dreaded term) €œmoney ball€ philosophy on the base paths.
The next time we break down the ROB we’ll look at some of the best ROB ratio’s from the year 2000 and up, and focus in on the ROB ratio’s on MLB catchers. Eventually we’re going to at least attempt to discover a ratio or equation that will allow us to determine the value of a walk to a slow running power hitter.
