April 25, 2016: Tokyo, Japan – It was just about one year ago, during spring training 2015, that a Ghosts beat writer asked manager Andrés Quiñones how he intended to pull the team out of its last-place finish from the previous year.  Quiñones famously replied, “We’re going to run.  We’re going to run like sushi.”  (Actually, he used a different word, but this is a family publication.)

And run they did.  The Ghosts tallied 182 stolen bases in 2015, nearly twice its ‘14 total of 93 and just one SB shy of the LRS single-season team SB record of 183 set by Kure in 2010.

I mulled this over when the Arsenal last week signed stud free agent gaijin catcher Jeffery Graham to a two-year, $18-million dollar deal.  Kure General Manager Aaron Tassano said, “It pays to have a good defensive catcher when you’re playing in the same division as the Blazin’ Ghosts.”

Blazing, yes – but to what end?  On the surface, it worked: the team moved up to third place and sported its first above-.500 record since 2011.  Yet to immediately attribute those gains simply to running more may be, at best, overly simplistic.  At worst – if in fact their thieving game is hurting the team – that conclusion may be a fallacy.

The inherent problem with gauging the value of stolen bases is that when a runner is caught stealing, we will never know what might have been.  If the next batter hits a double, you can’t automatically assume that the erased runner would have scored.  In fact, you can’t assume the batter would have hit a double if the runner had remained at first.  We simply will never know if a failed attempt to steal hurt the team.  That said, let’s look more closely at the Ghosts’ – and the league’s – propensity to run.

Quiñones’s desire to have the team run more was undoubtedly fueled by a spike in its 2014 SB success rate.  SB attempts by the Ghosts in 2013 were 110, with a mediocre 59% success rate (league average success rate, as we will see later, is 68%).  In 2014, the number of attempts rose only slightly to 126, but the success rate jumped to 74%.  This meant that successful steals for the team rose substantially from 65 in ‘13 to 93 in ‘14.  That jump in success clearly prompted Quiñones to go whole hog into the thieving game in 2015.  The results between ‘14 and ‘15 are seen here:

Quiñones’s little experiment seems to have paid off – attempts to steal more than doubled, and the success rate dipped only slightly.  In fact, that success rate was among the highest in the LRS in ‘15.  But still, staring us in the face is the “caught stealing” total for last season.  71 times, Ghosts runners were nabbed by crafty pitchers or catchers.  That tally didn’t just lead the league in that dubious distinction; it set an all-time league record.

Did this hurt the team?  We go back to our earlier caveat that we will never know what might have been.  I submit that any claims by pundits that they can prove the value of those 71 erased base runners are fallacious and nonsensical.  So let’s instead focus on what did happen – how the Ghosts offense increased its counting stats from ‘14 to ‘15:

Raw offense:
Hits: Up 8%
Doubles: Up 12%
Triples: Up 35%
Homeruns: Up 4%
Stolen Bases: Up 98%

This resulted in:
Runs scored: Up 23%
RBI: Up 23%
Wins: Up 48%

So did the sheer number of stolen bases make the difference in the Ghosts improvement?  The answer is a firm, “Probably.”  The only other stat to show a large increase was triples, but those numbers (22 in ‘14, 30 in ‘15) can’t have been as great a contributing factor.

Moreover, the Ghosts have virtually no power and have a home ballpark that inhibits home runs.  Their 2015 HR total was the lowest in the entire league.  The front office appears to have geared its farm system to account for this.  So with both runs and RBI up by nearly 25%, and with power largely absent, one cannot help but to credit thievery with these results.

With that in mind, let’s look at the stealing ways of the league as a whole.  The 2015 results show that LRS teams fall into three distinct groups: three squads that are unlikely to run, five that run occasionally, and four that run often:

What’s fascinating here is that the teams that ran the most had the highest success rate.  The teams that ran occasionally had success rates just under league average.  The teams that rarely ran did a poor job when they did try.

That may seem obvious – but it’s really not.  Just because you try to steal a base doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be successful more often.  We could have easily seen higher success rates in the middle, less risky pack.  Perhaps all this says is that teams that run more know they have speedy guys who make it worth trying.

The breakdown in the chart above clearly has little to do with winning.  The Evas won the SSG with the second-lowest number of attempts at thievery.  But Shin Seiki has power galore.  They don’t need to run, and in fact may be better off not running.

I wondered, “What is the correlation? Can speed substitute for power?”  So I did a silly little thing that would have my fellow stat gnats exploding in apoplexy.  I combined the ‘15 HR and SB totals for all LRS teams and correlated them to regular season wins.  I postulated that a stolen base is worth a shade over two-fifths of a home run.  For lack of a better acronym (send me your suggestions), I call this stat SBHR.  The exact formula is:

SBHR = (SB/2.45) + HR

As you can see, this new stat correlates fairly well with last season’s order of finish in the SSG and BBG.  There are three anomalous results:

1. The Arsenal smashed the second-most home runs in the SSG, yet they finished fourth.  This stat would place them second.
2. Similarly, the Steel Dragons hit the second-highest number of HR in the BBG, yet they finished fourth.  This stat would place them second.  Other factors may well have been at play here for both Kure and Kuwana, but that’s for another day.
3. The final anomaly is the Battousai, who according to this new stat had the highest SBHR in the entire league, yet they finished second in the BBG.  Of course, we can’t forget who won the Neo-Tokyo Cup last year, so I’m not sure I would count this is a true anomaly.

So let’s say two anomalous results out of twelve.  Not too good, the sabermetricians would say.  But I believe what this new stat does is capture how a team that has such anemic power can still place third simply by pushing the thieving game.   I have strong doubts they can push it further, though.  They’ll need power as well if the squad hopes to rise higher in ‘16.

But enough aimless musings: let the season begin!