You need to have about a 72.4% chance to be successful when
stealing second to make it worthwhile.
Anything better than that will increase your expected runs.
Okay, and if you look at probability success on stealing past years,
I mean it hovers around 70%, which is very similar to this, but
one point I should have made on bunting and stealing,
that people who are Not totally analytics people might make,
and it's a valid point, it basically upsets the defense.
See if you never bunt, they don't have to worry about it,
but if you're going to bunt sometimes, they've got to worry,
they've got to play guys in, and then maybe you get more hits because of that.
And I think that's really tough Idea to analyze.
And if you've got a great base stealer on first,
it probably upsets the pitcher a great deal.
We can look at the batting average,
when there is a really good base stealer on first that hitters have,
versus the batting average if there's not a really great base stealer on first.
And see if it makes a difference after adjusting for the quality of the hitter.
And honestly I haven't done the research to check that, but see,
that might imply that base running has sort of an external benefit that's
not captured by the fact that basically you went from first to second.
You'll score more runs because you're on second, but
maybe the fact that the bunting and
the stealing upsets the defense has a benefit which would be hard to measure.
Okay, so in our next few videos we're going to talk about analyzing fielders.