Off-Topic Forum

Absolutely Nothing 

;)

When is the last time we saw a player steal 100 bases in a season? Vince Coleman in 1987 

RIP Ken.

I always thought his Gold Glove award for 1975 was odd. He probably should had a Gold Glove or two during one of the seasons where Doug Rader won it five years in a row (1970-1974) and deserved some consideration in the run later where they gave it to Mike Schmidt over and over. Instead, he won it in 1975, his one bad year in the field (arguably the worst-fielding 3B in the NL that season). Feels like the award committee was making it right for defaulting to Rader for the first half of the 1970s.

RIP Ken Reitz. A player well before my time, but I have managed to get his cards into my collection. 

I looked at his stats on baseball reference, and they prove how bad WAR and a lot of saber metreics are in measuring a player's talent. Hopefully as I grow older, saber meterics will have their cool down. 

WAR is flawed.  And the problem is that has become the go-to to end debates as if its flawless.  Its not.

If you take 2 full time players who play only one position...the numbers will make sense.  If any of the variable start straying from that, the system starts kicking out weird answers.  Once you get to part time players and multi-positional guys...forget it.

Starting a system with average=0... you'll never be able to iron out the flaws.  You just can't.  And any system that adjust batting stats based on the defensive position?  Nobody goes up to the plate as a fielder.  They go up to the plate as a hitter.

The missing stolen base... I am glad to have seen many clubs utilize it in getting on base, moving around the basepaths, and scoring runs. NL teams of the 80's were known to do that (as opposed to AL home run clubs).

In 2019, 20 of the 30 MLB franchises had a decline in stolen base production from the year before. Only 13 teams had such a drop between 2017 and 2018.

Too bad GMs want to run the show (so to speak) with their analytic books and not allow managers to think within a game's action.

I knew Vince was the last Cardinal to steal 100, but I didn't realize he was the last person to do it in the entire MLB. Maybe my question should have been "Who was the last person to steal 75 bases in a season?". That is less than one steal for every 2 games. Even the best base-stealers today only seem to get around the same SB's as the top HR hitters hit each year.

Interesting stats Mike. Oddly, it seems like kind of a wash when you count the MLB Champions though. From 1980 to 1990, the NL won 6 of the 11 WS's. In the next 11 World Series', the NL only won 3 (remember that there was no WS in 1994). Since 2003, it's basically a wash again with the NL winning 10 (including the last 2) and the AL winning 8 titles. When the NL tried the "home run approach" in the 90's, it basically failed to win them titles. But they also stopped stealing as many bases during that period. I think that was an attempt to keep opponents from walking the best batters onto a "free" base. But the more runners on-base means ANY hit could drive in a run or more. Clogging first base didn't seem to work for the NL teams during that time. Lastly, GM's should only be assembling the team, not running it during a game. That is the Manager's job and he should be allowed to do it however he sees fit.

Last player to Steal 75+ was Jose Reyes in 2007 with 78 and to go a step further Dee Gordon was the last 50+ guy with 60 in 2017

Its just ebb and flow.  SBs generally decrease as HRs increase, because the value of the runner on first is increased.  There were no 50 HR guys in the 80's, but you had 100 SB guys.  There were very few SBs in the 50's as everyone sat around waiting the HR.  (Side note, catcher's arms became a low priority in the 50's which is what allowed Maury Wills to re-introduce the stolen base in the early 60's).