Running the Bases: Not an Astros Strength

Add baserunning to the list of things that have gone south

Dec 19, 2024

I’m typically a positive, glass-half-filled kind of fan and writer, at least in season.

Lately, I’ve written more negative pieces about the Astros, whether it’s the infield defense, walks allowed by the pitching staff, lack of patience at the plate or mediocre run scoring.

Don’t get me wrong, all those things are issues for Houston, but I don’t relish being negative.

Unfortunately, “Negative Guy” (h/t Steve Spurrier) is back.

This coming season, I hope to document the little things I notice during the season.

Things that seem small or even “nothing” at the time, but at the end of the season you look up and go “28th in the league?”

Baserunning is one of those “little things” and it’s gotten so bad that I gave up in season.

Instead of tracking it and writing about it, I let it slide.

“Well, that’s just Altuve”, has been uttered more than I care to admit in this house.

But how bad is the Astros baserunning?

Bad. For years. And getting worse.

Fangraphs has a stat named BsR (Baserunning) that feeds into fWAR and not surprisingly the Astros were near the bottom of the league over the course of 2024.

Read up on the details at the link if you are so inclined, but in short:

BsR (Base Running Runs Above Average): Number of runs above or below average a player has been worth on the bases, based on stolen bases, caught stealing, extra bases taken, outs on the bases, and avoiding double plays. It is the combination of wSB, UBR, and wGDP.

The Astros ranked 28th of 30 teams in 2024, ahead of the Angels and Yankees.

That’s -12.8 as in 12.8 runs below average and 32.5 runs below best.

An average team on the bases scored 13 more runs and maybe wins three or four more of the Astros’ 27 one-run losses in 2024.

This isn’t new and has been going on for some time and it’s been trending in the wrong direction.

While some of the individual names are where you’d expect them in the table below, you wouldn’t expect names like McCormick and Dubon to be south of 0.

This makes me wonder if it’s more of an organizational thing, rather than an individual.

Perhaps something that hasn’t been emphasized or considered “important”.

Some players are likely only to improve marginally, players like Singleton or Caratini.

But McCormick and Dubon? Those two, among others, seem like candidates for improvement.

If Cesar Salazar can be above average, why can’t Yainer Diaz, or Mauricio Dubon?

While you can’t teach speed, baserunning is a skill that can be taught, learned, practiced and improved upon.

No, Dubon is not going to steal 30 bases, but he can learn to run the bases better.

In and of itself, this stat is not necessarily a game-changer. The Yankees made the World Series and were 4.1 runs worse than the Astros, but they also trotted around the bases more than Houston.

But baserunning is another area that has slipped in recent seasons and this one has more than doubled, negatively, since the 2022 World Series.

Putting it all together though, there is so much room for improvement: Walking too many batters, middle of the pack in scoring, bad defense around the infield, not taking enough pitches and bad baserunning.

The good news is most of these are correctable, at least to some degree.

I’m sure all of these areas and more have been identified internally, but one wonders how the “fundamentals” got so out of whack over the last two seasons.

The plan is to track these (and write about them!) in 2025 to measure progress or lack thereof and periodically report back.