Fastest basestealer in baseball

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jim
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Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by jim »

Average time from break to bag goes to the one and only, Rico Noel @ 3.47 seconds. Hamilton and Dyson came in second and third in MLB. How many here knew Rico Noel was that fast? How many here knew who Rico Noel even was?

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stlouie_lipp
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by stlouie_lipp »

Not me, but that's fast!

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by GeddyWrox »

Holy crap! I can't get off my couch that fast!

jim
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

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Actually after I wrote this and thought a minute, I realized something isn't adding up. An average MLB catcher needs about 2 seconds flat from the time the ball hits his mitt to the time the ball is in the 2B mitt. An average delivery to the plate is about 1.3 - 1.4 seconds. Slapping a tag down would be at most .1 - so 3.4 means an average catcher with an average delivery to the plate should get Billy Hamilton on his average jump? That can't be right.

Something is off with this.

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Swirls
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

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jim wrote:Actually after I wrote this and thought a minute, I realized something isn't adding up. An average MLB catcher needs about 2 seconds flat from the time the ball hits his mitt to the time the ball is in the 2B mitt. An average delivery to the plate is about 1.3 - 1.4 seconds. Slapping a tag down would be at most .1 - so 3.4 means an average catcher with an average delivery to the plate should get Billy Hamilton on his average jump? That can't be right.

Something is off with this.
I was thinking the same thing. Any chance average plate delivery times have increased to over 2 seconds?

jim
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by jim »

No chance. 1.5 is slow. 1.6-1.7 just about everyone on the team is running. Sometimes Bill James puts stuff in his book without really explaining it, and I wonder what he did to get these times. I'll try to find out tonight.

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Swirls
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

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So basically an extra .2 seconds of delivery time and you're gonna start sending everyone? The extra .2 seconds or so is enough for those slow-footed runners to theoretically be safe ~70% of the time to break even on batting runs?

I would have thought it would be higher - like at least a half second, probably more.

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IMADreamer
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by IMADreamer »

This is slightly off topic but I was having a conversation the other day with someone about players and the amount of strides they take to get from say 2nd to 3rd on a hit to RF when they are on first base. We were talking about how it seems JHey takes about four strides between 2nd and 3rd. Does the James book have a stat on that? Probably a silly stat that doesn't exist but it got me curious as to who would take the fewest strides in that situation.

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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by jim »

Swirls wrote:So basically an extra .2 seconds of delivery time and you're gonna start sending everyone? The extra .2 seconds or so is enough for those slow-footed runners to theoretically be safe ~70% of the time to break even on batting runs?

I would have thought it would be higher - like at least a half second, probably more.
.2 of a second is huge. 1.95 is an average MLB catcher, 1.75 is Yadi in his prime.

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33anda3rd
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Re: Fastest basestealer in baseball

Post by 33anda3rd »

I thought Rico Noel was a mafia raid over Christmastime.

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