First of all, I have no idea if it’s “base runner” and “base running” or if it’s “baserunner” and “baserunning.”
I’ve seen it both ways, and I don’t know which is correct. The glossary on MLB.com lists the term as baserunner, one word. Merriam-Webster says it’s base runner, two words, but also shows that baserunning is fine. Dictionary.com says it can be either. All I know is that I get the ugly red spellcheck underline anytime I type base running as one word, and that bothers my OCD tendencies, so I’ll be splitting the word until a consensus is reached.
Anyway…
I’ve been wondering recently who was the best base runner in baseball history, even though I know we’ll never have the answer. What I’m interesting in figuring out is not who the fastest player was, or the best base stealer was, or the most prolific at getting on base in the first place. I mean who was the most effective at literally running the bases once they got there. Who took extra bases the best? Who stole the most often but also the most efficiently in terms of both success rate and per time he reached base. Who avoided bing picked off or thrown out on the bases?
Data around running the bases simply wasn’t recorded for a huge chunk of baseball history. I noted in yesterday’s edition that the number of times a players was caught stealing wasn’t tracked consistently until 1920. For Negro Leagues players that data wasn’t captured at all, for any year. The information is probably buried in some box scores and game stories, but they have to be found, analyzed, and the data collected for it to do us any good, and that’s a remarkably slow process.
And that’s just for attempted steals. Data around other aspects of running the bases is even more incomplete. The folks at Fangraphs have a stat called UBR, short for Ultimate Base Running, but it only goes back to 2002. The folks at Baseball Prospectus had one called Base Running Runs, or BRR, but it only went back to 1950. How many outs a player made on the bases, or extra bases they took, or times they were picked off, or any of the other components of base running, simply weren’t captured until very recently.
So we’re not really going to get an iron-clad answer. You should know that going in.
What we do have available to us are some tools that help us make a pretty educated guess. There’s a statistic at Baseball-Reference.com called Runs from Base Running, abbreviated to Rbaser. It’s described this way:
I don’t know where Sean Smith got data about defensive indifference, wild pitches, and so forth, and it’s almost certainly incomplete, but at least it gives us a starting point. Here are the top 15 players in terms of Rbaser in history:
A few obvious things jump out. First, other than Max Carey, no one on this list started playing before 1948, with most of them starting their careers in the 1960s or later. Further down is Pee Wee Reese, and Ty Cobb, and Slidin’ Billy Hamilton, but the list is dominated by players from the 60’s onward.
That makes sense from two perspectives. First, I’m sure we’re running into that data collection issue again, with more modern players simply being more likely to have complete information.
Second, the style of play before World War II, and really before Babe Ruth changed the game, involved a much more wanton disregard for being thrown out on the base paths. For instance, over 80% of all would-be base stealers were successful last season, no doubt influenced by the slightly larger bases, limited pickoff attempts, and a greater awareness about running primarily in advantageous situations. In 1990 that was 69%. In 1970 it was 64%. In 1950 it was 55%.
The other thing that jumps out is that these were all great base stealers. That seems pretty obvious since we’re looking for the best base runners and the stat I’m using has steals and caught stealing as a main component. But this also means Rbaser is a counting statistic, just like total steals would be. The shortest career in this list is the 1,371 games played by Vince Coleman. The only other player under 2,000 career games is Davey Lopes at 1,812.
Rickey Henderson is at the top of the list. No surprise there. I guess my work here is done.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s necessarily right, and it’s really not what I’m looking for. I’m trying to find out who ran the bases the best each time he got on board. Obviously Henderson’s massive steal totals are carrying an enormous weight for him in his Rbaser totals. The guy played 3,081 games and got on base more than anyone not named Rose, Bonds, or Cobb, and then stole the most bases in history once he was there, so of course he was going to have a lofty Rbaser total. None of that tells me much about how he did on a per-opportunity basis. Frankly, Henderson’s 144 Rbaser total seems a bit light given all of those opportunities, doesn’t it?
With 5,343 times on base by hit, walk, or being hit by a pitch, the math works out to Rickey producing a base running run once every 37.1 times he reached base. Done in reverse, dividing his 144 Base Running Runs by 5,343 gives us a ratio of .027. Now let’s do that math for everyone else in the top-15:
.045 - Willie Wilson
.039 - Vince Coleman
.033 - Davey Lopes
.029 - Tim Raines
.027 - Rickey Henderson
.027 - Luis Aparicio
.025 - Max Carey
.024 - Barry Larkin
.023 - Kenny Lofton
.022 - Ozzie Smith
.020 - Lou Brock
.020 - Johnny Damon
.018 - Joe Morgan
.017 - Paul Molitor
.016 - Willie Mays
This gets me much closer to what I had in mind. Anyone who ever watched Willie Wilson run the bases wouldn’t be surprised by this result at all. The guy went first-to-third, or first-to-home, or second-to-home, better than anyone I’ve ever seen. He didn’t look like a baseball player who was running, he looked like a runner who happened to be wearing a baseball uniform. There’s a big difference. Seeing Wilson slap a ball into the gap on that slick turf they used to have at Royals Stadium was a sight to behold. You can find some clips of his career highlights online, but this is my favorite one. Pardon the terrible video quality:
Just to sort of sanity check the result, let’s take a quick look at some other component parts of base running, comparing Wilson to Henderson:
SB Success Rate: Wilson, 83%; Henderson, 81%
Extra Bases Taken: Wilson, 58%; Henderson, 55%
Runs Scored Percentage: Wilson, 41%; Henderson, 39%
Reach by Error: Wilson, 1.29%; Henderson, 1.20%
Yeah, I’m pretty comfortable in saying Wilson was a better base runner than Henderson. He wasn’t a better all-around player, obviously, but once he got on the bases he was a bigger threat to steal, score, or take an extra base than Henderson was. And that’s essentially what the Rbaser stat is telling us.
There were other players with a better Rbaser Ratio than Wilson’s .045. Billy Hamilton (the modern version, not the guy in the Hall of Fame) had 44 Base Running Runs in just 947 times on base. That’s a ratio of .046. Jarrod Dyson had 41 in just 875 times on base, for a ratio of .047. You can find others in that ballpark, but you can’t find someone who played as long as Wilson did and still maintained a rate that high. He had about three times the on-base opportunities of either Hamilton or Dyson and yet still had nearly the same Rbaser ratio. I think it’s fair to give Wilson the nod over players with significantly more limited skills and much shorter careers.
Maybe Base Running Runs isn’t the right place to start in trying to figure this out. Certainly it’s as flawed and incomplete as any other base running statistic out there.
But, based on the tools at our disposal, Willie Wilson appears the be the best base runner in baseball history.
I'm right there with you on "base running" vs "baserunning". When I was sports editor at 538, where we had a very exacting copy desk, they insisted on 2 words. But as a kid growing up consuming baseball material, I feel like I almost always saw it as 1 word. So that's what I go with at my Substack, though sometimes I also just like to fly in the face of AP Style for fun. ;)