After watching just 2 white sox game this year, i have come to the observation that the sox may have the slowest team in the history of baseball. I may be exaggerating with an extremely small sample size, but speed is one of those things that you cant teach, and a team isnt suddenly going to deviate from their root mean square steal rate.
Lets take a quick look at the career steals and steals rate for the starting position players.
AJ Pierzynski: 9 Steals, 4172 PA, .216steals/PA percentage
Paul Konerko: 7 Steals, 6275 PA, .112steals/PA percentage
Chris Getz: 56 Steals, 1629 PA, 3.438 steals/PA percentage(minors)
Alexei Ramirez: 13 Steals, 512 PA, 2.539 steals/PA percentage
Josh Fields: 1 Steals, 481 PA, .208 steals/PA percentage
Carlos Quentin: 10 Steals, 1027 PA, .974 steals/PA percentage
Dewayne Wise: 21 Steals, 508 PA, 4.133 steals/PA percentage
Jermaine Dye: 46 Steals, 6644 PA, .692 steals/PA percentage
Jim Thome: 19 Steals, 9033 PA, .210 steals/PA percentage
Total: 182 Steals, 30281 PA, .601 steals/PA percentage
Not taking into account the age of most of these players, such that their 'fast' days are behind then, and taking into account Chris Getz' minor league steals rate, which should decline in the majors, the numbers work out to about 1 stolen base every 166 plate appearances for this group. Assuming an average number of 6200 plate appearances the sox are likely to accumulate this year, it works out to about 37 stolen bases for the starters. That is pitiful to say the least. I know that steals are becoming less relevant in the new age of baseball, but it also shows up in simply running the bases. Like scoring more than one run on 4 consecutive singles. The Padres only managed 36 steals last year, so this may not be the slowest team of all time, but it will be close.
Good luck playing small ball Ozzie
1) Who the fuck cares? The bigger problem is that only Quentin and Thome walk with high OBS. Wise, Getz, ARam, AJ, and Dye don't walk and Konerko walks but has a somewhat low OBS
ReplyDelete2) Seriously, everyone needs to get this through they're heads OZZIE BALL DOES NOT EQUAL SMALL BALL!!! The Sox did do this is 2005 but not since then!
is nobody allowed to say anything anymore about the white sox. like it's impossible to write a post about anything sox and not have you get very defensive. I think i pointed out a pretty good observation, that's all it is.
ReplyDeleteNot when you guys are dissing them. You don't see me posting about how the Cubs suck in the playoffs do you?
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but if you wanna talk about the Sox talk about them but don't be spreading rumors- mainly that Ozzie likes to play Small Ball. This is false are is based on an image people have on Ozzie versus reality.