I found this snippet from Joey at BBTiA rather interesting:

MLB.com's Daniel Pauling recently lauded the Rangers' basestealing prowess thus far in 2009, which has manifested to the tune of the best team stolen-base percentage in the American League at 84.8 percent (67-for-79), but modern sabermetrics enable us to penetrate beyond the surface statistics and evaluate other aspects of baserunning -- and it is in this regard that Texas is not excelling, but rather floundering.

According to team baserunning statistics devised by former Baseball Prospectus author Dan Fox (now working as the Pirates' director of baseball systems development), that lofty basestealing success rate has amounted to a theoretical 4.53-run edge above what would be expected given the number and quality of the Rangers' basestealing opportunities (the best mark in baseball, and worth nearly half a win), but Texas actually grades out at minus-4.04 runs once the other team baserunning components are added to the mix. Why is this?

Basically, the Rangers have been a bottom-tier team in terms of generating additional runs by means of baserunning advancements on ground balls, fly balls and base hits; they have particularly struggled in that final category, grading out as the worst team in baseball in terms of advancing on base hits (minus-5.53 runs), and the baserunning numbers available at Bill James Online support this assertion, with Texas successfully advancing from first to third base just 10 times in 73 opportunities (or 13.7 percent of the time, the ballclub's worst seasonal mark since at least 2001) and from first base to home plate just 10 times in 45 opportunities, which is also the ballclub's lowest success rate since 2001.

 

I know i've loved our aggressiveness and effeciency when it comes to stealing bases. It seems like we have a well prepared, smart team when it comes to stealing bases, and while we arent the fastest team in the league, we have some guys that can move. However, the loss of advancement on hit balls is disturbing, we've lost over 8 runs in baserunning advancements on balls hit in play according to Bill James. And with the way we've failed miserably at scoring runners from 3rd with less than two outs, I think the runs lost b/c of not scoring from 1st on 2bs and 2nd on 1Bs is likely worse. Thats the difference in at least 2 wins, maybe more... and it could certaintly be the difference in a pennant. To me, I think a ton of this falls on the lack of aggressiveness by our 3b coach. I know there have been several times where i was pretty much screaming at the tv b/c we didnt send a guy home when he could have seemingly easily scored... Im not sure exactly where the entire disconnect is between the aggressiveness in stealing bases and the lack of aggressiveness in taking the extra base is, but I think a ton of it comes in the form of Dave Anderson, our 1st time 3B coach. I dont know much about the guy, but i do know that it certaintly seems like we have definitively lost runs because of his inability to send runners when they need to be sent.

I dont have a subscription to bill james online unfortunately, but id be very interested to compare these numbers to the #'s from last year to see if with nearly the same baserunners (Salty, Nelly, and Andrus for Vasquez, Laird and Bradley is probably most of the difference in runners) if we had better results on advancements on balls in play. I know from looking at Baseball Reference that Ian was one of the best at advancing last year. I dont necessarily want us to become uber aggressive like the Angels, but when you are losing that many runs b/c of lack of advancement on balls in play, you are being way too conservative. No matter what, those numbers are unacceptable and need to be improved upon,because this is something that seemingly could be improved upon simply by sitting down and having a chat with the team and especially with Dave Anderson.