Assuming the base stealing set to average...and speed of a player 80+, at what base running rating is he liable to "take off on his own" and be a successful base stealer?  Is there an optimum base running/speed combo for a premium base stealer?

100/100?

Posted by maxdeardorff on 6/7/2011 11:44:00 PM (view original):
100/100?

+1

lol, that would be the "optimum combo"!  

80+ in both will be what I would call a "premium" base stealer.

FWIW I've always felt that the Baserunning (BR) rating mostly influenced success while the Speed (SP) rating mostly influenced frequency of attempts.  A very brief look at a very small sample of data (7 players over 2 seasons) seems to bear that out with Success % correlating with BR at about .9 and with speed at about .3 and Attempt/Times on Base correlating with SP at about .75 and with BR at about .3.

So, if you have to pick one over the other, go with BR before speed.  Good speed and bad baserunning is a deadly combination and I have a couple of players I'd like to give permanent stop signs.

I'd like to put up a couple of players that have nuanced my understanding of baserunning. One is my own Norm Hutton, who has good speed and mediocre baserunning.  He still beats the 70% success rate that determines whether a base-stealer is doing anything to help his team or not.  And this year, he was actually great.  Baserunning is an important attribute, but very good speed can make up for a rating in the 60s.
http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1923615

Another player is Winston Marte.  He proves that the opposite is actually true, too.  Of course, for some reason, there are a lot fewer players with great baserunning than there are with great speed.  There must be a programming reason for that.

http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1661070


And of course, any guy with 80+/80+ is bound to steal about 40 bases.  And if one of those numbers is in the 90s, he can steal 75.  The guys who steal 100+ seem to have composite numbers in the 180s.