Paul Molitor Baserunning

daltex

How good a baserunner was Paul Molitor? I don't know that I ever saw him play live, but I don't ever remember him having a reputation as a great baserunner. I took a look, though, at the all-time leaders in "Runs from baserunning", or Rbaser.

Henderson, not surprisingly, is number 1 by a large margin and 8 of the top 11 are HoFers, with Willie Wilson, Lopes, and Lofton the other three. I was surprised to see Molitor at 12 and, more surprisingly, ahead of Brock at 13.

So was Molitor a lot better than I remember, or are the numbers misleading?

ringer

He was a smart baserunner more than a speed guy. I mean, he was above average fast but just good instincts.

charlesf20

Excellent base maneuvers.

dallasactuary

Rbaser doesn't measure "smart" baserunning, it just measures SB, CS, and advancing on WP/PB. You can recreate the Rbaser list pretty closely by going to the all-time SB% leaders and then sorting that list by attempts. Molitor is 20th on that makeshift list, but there are only 9 ahead of him with a higher SB%. (Those 9 are Henderson, Raines, Coleman, Morgan, Wilson, Lofton, Smith, Lopes, and Reyes). In other words, Molitor's place on the Rbaser list reflects, almost entirely, that he has a lot of SB attempts, and a high SB%.

JoeBanzai

He was pretty good when he came back to Minnesota at the end of his career.

JWP

He did seem to get the best of Detroit. But then, who doesn't.

LandrysFedora

Chipper Jones was an excellent base runner. He obviously wasn't a base stealing king like Henderson but he always picked his spots and actually put up some decent sb numbers for a big slugger. He was a very observant base runner. Always seemed to know where outfielders were positioned and who had the good throwing arms and who didn't. He had the uncanny ability to process all of that info combined with how hard and where a ball was hit in a split second and often went 1st to 3rd with the best of them. He was more times than not in the best base running positions on any particular play. As a Braves fan I may sound biased, but I believe him to be the best base runner of my time. I'm not a stats guy but I wonder where he ranks with the Rbaser stat which I never heard of until I read one of the above posts.

dallasactuary

Jones ranks nowhere on the Rbaser list with a career total of 4 (Molitor had 78). As I said earlier, Rbaser isn't measuring going from 1st to 3rd and stuff like that, it's mostly measuring SB attempts and SB%. Jones attempted 196 SBs, and was successful 76.5% of the time. That's not bad, but it's also nothing special. A stat that did measure stuff like going from 1st to 3rd would be interesting and valuable, but it doesn't exist as far as I know.

LandrysFedora

@dallasactuary said:
Jones ranks nowhere on the Rbaser list with a career total of 4 (Molitor had 78). As I said earlier, Rbaser isn't measuring going from 1st to 3rd and stuff like that, it's mostly measuring SB attempts and SB%. Jones attempted 196 SBs, and was successful 76.5% of the time. That's not bad, but it's also nothing special. A stat that did measure stuff like going from 1st to 3rd would be interesting and valuable, but it doesn't exist as far as I know.

Thanks for that explanation.

Justacommeman

@JWP said:
He did seem to get the best of Detroit. But then, who doesn't.

A Rod and the Yankees in the playoffs

m