Double Plays and Stolen Base Prevention; these things keep the game under control.  Our first task today is to estimate how many runs each team has prevented by turning the Double Play.   The first assignment of THAT task is to estimate how many double plays the team should have been EXPECTED to turn.  Fortunately, I have a really good set of formulas for that, and fortunately, I have already explained those formulas to you, so we can dispense with that.   For illustration, we’ll use the 1941 Yankees, the greatest Double Play team of all time. 

The 1941 Yankees turned 196 Double Plays.   Had they been just average at turning the double play we would have expected them to turn 151, which is an above-average average; the average over time is 139.   (The team which would have been expected to turn the most double plays, for whatever this is worth, is the 1983 California Angels, who could have been expected to turn 202 Double Plays, since (a) the team gave up a huge number of hits, and (b) they had an extreme ground ball staff.  The Angels actually turned 190 Double Plays, only six fewer than the 1941 Yankees, but 12 below expectation in their case.)

So anyway, we re-state the 196 Double Plays for the 1941 Yankees as 145, meaning 45 more than expected.  Every team is now stated on the 100-scale, so that the average for each year is 100, or some number very close to it.   The Standard Deviation for the 1940s is 16.12. 

We’re going to use three standard deviations below the norm as the zero-standard here.  When you array the data by standard deviations—we learned this earlier in this series of article.   When you array the data by standard deviations, the most extreme teams are almost always just short of three standard deviations from the norm in the direction bounded by zero, and just short of four standard deviations from the norm in the direction which is not bounded by zero.  I made a decision earlier that I would use three standard deviations below the norm as the zero-standard in an area in which higher numbers represented excellence, and four standard deviations below the norm as the zero-standard in an area in which higher numbers represented failure.   But since higher numbers represent failure for all of the categories here except strikeouts and double plays, this means that we use three standard deviations below average as the zero-standard for strikeouts and double plays, but four standard deviations for all of the other categories.

This was a questionable decision, in the construction of the system, and we’ll revisit it at an appropriate point, but for now, I’m proceeding with 3 standard deviations below the norm as the zero-value standard for double plays.  The standard deviation for the 1940s is 16.12—another questionable choice in there, by the way—so three standard deviations below the norm would be 52 double plays.   (100 – 3 * 16.12 = 51.64.)

We have the Yankees now at 145 double plays—remember, we adjusted it for context—so the Yankees were 93 double plays better than the zero-value standard.   But what is the value of a double play, in this context?

We have already given the defense credit for the first out, the forceout at second base; that would be included in DER.   What is at issue here is the second out, and the removal of a baserunner.   How do we value those things?

The removal of the baserunner by the second out has the value of a negative walk.  Since a walk is valued at .32 runs, that’s .32 runs.   The addition of an out to the scoreboard, in this context, seems to be the same as a strikeout, more or less.  We value a strikeout at .30 runs, so that makes a total of .62 runs.  So I’m valuing the double play at .62 runs.

Again, this is a questionable choice, and I will revisit it if I become aware of some better way to place a value on a double play (in this context.)   But for now, I will use .62 runs.   So the Yankees are 93 double plays better than a zero-value defense, and each double play is valued at .62 runs.   That’s 58 Runs.   We will credit the Yankee defense (1941) with preventing 58 runs by their ability to turn the Double Play.  

All 2,550 teams in the study are credited with an estimated 62,176 runs prevented by turning the double play in a competent fashion.  A couple of teams are below zero.

Our next issue, then, is Stolen Base Control.   Unlike everything else in this system, Stolen Base Control has already been stated as a number of runs, so we won’t need to make that translation toward the end of our process.   We’ve got really 12 categories of defensive contribution that we are studying here, but we combined stolen bases allowed and runners caught stealing into one at an earlier stage of the analysis, and we stated them in terms of run value at that time. 

When we created this thing called "Stolen Base Value", however, we combined one category in which a high number is bad—stolen bases allowed—with one category in which a high number is good—caught stealing.  This leaves it unclear whether we should use three standard deviations or four standard deviations below the period norm as the zero-value standard. 

That issue, however, is easily enough resolved.   We don’t like negative numbers of runs saved here.   Negative numbers are going to be a damned nuisance later on in the process.   Negative numbers are very often a nuisance when you are analyzing value.   We can’t use three standard deviations below the norm as the zero-value standard if there are a significant number of teams which are below that standard.   

There are 21 teams in history which are three standard deviations-plus below the period norm in terms of Stolen Base Prevention,  or Stolen Base value.   The 2007 Padres are a whopping 5.8 Standard Deviations below the norm, and one other team is also four standard deviations below the norm.   We can deal with one or two teams being under water, but 21, no way.   We obviously have to use 4 standard deviations as the misery line.   

The best team ever at turning the Stolen Base Attempt into a weapon for the defense was the 1920 Boston Braves; we talked about them before, remember?  Mickey O’Neil, catcher.   The 1920 Braves gained about 44 runs from their opponents’ efforts to steal bases against them, but, since Stolen Value can be either positive or negative, this is 56 runs better than the zero-value line.   We credit the 1920 Braves with 56 Runs Prevented by Stolen Base Attempts—or, actually, by good defense against the Stolen Base Attempt.   The worst team ever, also by this measure:  2007 Stay Classy San Diego Padres.

For all of baseball history (1900 to the present) we estimate that 49,427 runs have been prevented by competent defense against the stolen base.  

OK, our last category to be subjected to this preliminary estimates round will be Passed Balls—the most annoying weed in our garden, other than Balks.   If we run Passed Balls through our standard protocols here, we reach the conclusions:

1)      That the best team ever at avoiding Passed Balls was the 1909 Detroit Tigers, catchers Oscar Stanage and Boss Schmidt.   The second-best team ever was the 1908 Detroit Tigers.   The 1931 Yankees (Bill Dickey) had NO passed balls on the season, but this gets less credit for Run Prevention since Passed Balls were much less common in that era.

2)     That the worst team ever was the 1987 Texas Rangers; you all know that story.

3)     The 1909 Tigers Prevented about 9 runs from Passed Balls that did not get past.   The 1987 Rangers actually have one of those dreaded negative numbers, negative 5.   Which I’ll probably just ignore at some point in our analysis, since it’s such a bullshit stat, and only a few teams have negative numbers anyway, most of which are like negative two tenths of a run or something. 

4)     The sum total of Runs Prevented by Passed Ball avoidance is estimated at 9,661. 

Adding all three of these categories into our data, our estimate is that we have accounted for 1,548,593 runs saved, which is only 13% off of our target.   Our next task will be to make some corrections to move this number even closer to our target (1,783,676), which, since we have hundreds of options on how to proceed, should not be difficult.   Thanks for reading.