Money BALLin!

A few years back I (and many others) were fully introduced to sabermetrics via Michael Lewis' Moneyball. The main premise of Moneyball was the new age emphasis on on base percentage and slugging percentage. Another central theme of Moneyball was that stolen bases, batting average, and runs batted in were "old relics" and out of date ways to gauge a baseball player's importance.

I'm a big believer in much of what Moneyball preached (especially on base %) but did not see eye to eye with all the arguments behind the book. Discussing Moneyball could be a book or multiple books within itself so I'm just going to focus on one aspect.

In the book Billy Beane is often portrayed as believing stolen bases are overrated. To an extent I agree with Beane, but I can not totally write off stolen bases and the potential impact they can have in a single game nor over the long haul of the season. I believe 30 stolen bases is the most overrated stat today in baseball. Over a 162 game schedule is stealing 30 bases really going to make much of an impact? I believe a base stealer does not largely impact the outcome of games over the long haul till he swipes 60-70 a year, that's roughly every other game. So to me there are only a hand full of base runners in the game today that really have the ability to impact games over a 162 game schedule. Jose Reyes and Juan Pierre are the only players in the 2007 season to steal over 60 bags.

While reading Moneyball I began to think of stolen bases in a different light, not as tallying them as merely stolen bases but combining them with another stat. What actually got me thinking of this was Beane's belief in slugging % and OPS. I thought of stolen bases as a way to compliment the main idea behind slugging %. Slugging % is basically a way of valuing the amount of bases a hitter gets in each at bat. So wouldn't stealing 2nd base after hitting a single be the same thing as hitting a double in the first place while also maybe affecting the way the opposing pitcher was pitching to the current hitter at the time the base was being swiped.... so maybe even more important than initially hitting the double? Now I do not know if anyone has created a stat taking this into account (I searched briefly and didn't find any such stat but please comment if you know of one). My idea is a new Slugging % or taking it a step further and using it as a OPS formula used for taking into account a players ability to take another base after his at bat is over. I'll call it the Fabricated OPS. How to find the Fabricated OPS : add the total SBs to the total Doubles then of course you would have to subtract the number of SBs from the original amount of singles. After that you would recalculate a player's Slugging% and then OPS with the original OPS formula using the new singles & doubles figures. Here is an example with Jose Reyes' numbers from the 2007 season. Reyes stole 78 bases in the '07 season. His original 2007 OPS was .775. After using the Fabricated OPS his new OPS is: .890. I also did this with the Marlins' SS Hanley Ramirez who stole 51 bases in '07. His original OPS was .948 and his new FAB OPS was 1.027!

Please let me know what you all think of this idea or if it has already been accounted for in a similar OPS stat?