Speed, Steals, Triples And The A's

The question is an interesting one and it deserves better than what it got so far. Here are just a few thoughts from my side:

- Stolen bases are definitely highly dependent on speed, however there are other factors which are almost equally important, like reading the pitchers’ moves and picking your spots. It is possible that Pennington has not lost any of his physical speed, but just does a poorer job in getting jumps and deciding when to run. It is also possible that after his “stealy” 2010 the league pays more attention to him, thus making it more difficult for him to steal.

- Triples are highly dependent on hitting. Pennington’s ISO (isolated slugging, normally a decent indicator of how hard he is hitting the ball) has declined for second year in a row, implying he is not making as hard of a contact as he was before. Not hitting the ball as hard might lead to fewer triples

- Another thing to consider is that Pennington is a switch hitter and that most hitters pull the ball and that pulled balls by lefties have a much better chance of being a triple than those by a right-handed hitter. Indeed, 12 of Pennington’s 13 career triples were hit from the left side. Pennington batted left-handed more often in 2010 (76%) than he does this year (65%), because he faced right-handers more often

- Adding to the previous point, Pennington has actually performed better with the bat this year than last, especially considering the unfavorable pitchers mix (he is a much better hitter as a lefty).

- As far for his baserunning scores, these are also lower this year (many baseball sites have their own ways of figuring some sort of a baserunning value). But, I would be careful with overvaluation of such numbers as I’m not sure how they are put together. One example: It is often looked at how often a runner advances from first to third on a single. However, many such analysis treat all the singles the same, whereas it is much harder to go 1st to 3rd on a hit to left field than it is on the one to right field. Last year Pennington had the majority of his at bats in front of Crisp and Barton (and just like Pennington, Crisp had a very high percentage of his at bats as a left-handed batter [73%]). This means that most of the singles hit behind him were to right field. This year there was less Barton and more Suzuki, and Weeks and Crisp have batted right-handed more frequently. So, perhaps there is some noise in his poor baserunning score (apart from no success in stealing bases).

- Finally, it is possible that he is just slower this year. It could be a little nagging injury or just one of those things we can not explain.

Anyway don’t get discouraged by people who have nothing to say, yet do it anyway. I hope you get some more interesting ideas, and I’ll be able to look deeper into it once I have my new DB up and running.