In the last three editions of The Bill James Handbook, we introduced a new statistic to measure baserunning. It's called Net Baserunning Gain and it's simply how many extra bases beyond average a player gains. For example, a runner goes first to third on a single about 30 percent of the time. The average is three out of ten. If a given player goes five out of ten, he is plus two. We look at all the situations like this, scoring from first on a double, scoring from second on a single, and so on and so forth. If a player is thrown out on the bases, he receives a triple penalty (-3). And we count stolen bases, but it's only a plus if it's better than a success rate of two out of three (67 percent).
It makes a difference. The top ten baserunning teams are a collective 58 games over .500 and the bottom ten are 51 games under .500.
Here are the best (and worst) baserunning teams so far this year.
| Team | Net Gain |
| Mets | +77 |
| Phillies | +76 |
| Rangers | +74 |
| Marlins | +61 |
| Rockies | +58 |
| … | |
| | |
| Cardinals | -22 |
| Yankees | -27 |
| Padres | -32 |
| Orioles | -36 |
| Nationals | -47 |
Here are the best and worst baserunners.
| Runner | Net Gain |
| Willy Taveras, Rockies | +44 |
| Ian Kinsler, Rangers | +40 |
| Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners | +40 |
| Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox | +31 |
| Randy Winn, Giants | +31 |
| … | |
| | |
| Jose Bautista, Pirates | -19 |
| Edgar Gonzalez, Padres | -19 |
| Ramon Hernandez, Orioles | -20 |
| Yorvit Torrealba, Rockies | -20 |
| Billy Butler, Royals | -24 |
| Yunel Escobar, Braves | -26 |
For a complete discussion of this new statistic, The Bill James Handbook 2008 has an essay by Bill James that goes into detail.
Source: BillJamesOnline.com (through the games of Tuesday, July 22, 2008)