The Muff and Boner Index

In the course of a season, teams rack up an amazing number of miscues that aren't viewed collectively for what they are--mistakes, usually brain cramps and not measures of "aggressive" play. An earlier post quantified some of these items for the 2009-2012 seasons, but this expands those definitions. Here's the chart, with explanations to follow:

Beginning with the eBR column:

eBR--base running mistakes, generally trying to take an additional base and being thrown out. This does NOT include force outs, since that's outside a base runner's control.

eBU--bunting mistakes, such as strikeouts, popups, double plays (OUCH!), etc. This does NOT include trying to bunt for a hit (which I define as a bunting attempt with the bases empty). A post from last year shows that bunting for a hit is not a bad strategy.

On the pitching side:

HBP, BK, WP, PB--the traditional measures of hit-by-pitch, balk, wild pitch and passed ball

eP--errors in pitching, which is when one of the above DIRECTLY leads to a run, for example, a batter is walked with the bases loaded, leading to a run. I could argue that I should measure ANY run that occurred because of one of these events, but that's too much work.

SB, CS--on the hitting side, that's the teams stolen bases and caught stealing, on the pitching side, it's the opponents. 

SBd--the differential between the POSITIVE stolen base events (SB + opponent CS) and the NEGATIVE events (CS and opponent SB)

The total column is the sum of (eBR...eP)-(SBd). To illustrate, this is the Diamondbacks' line:

 3(eBR)+4(eBU)+6(HBP)+1(BK)+7(WP)+0(PB)+0(eP)-[(4(SB)+1(oCS))-(3(CS)+4(oSB))]

After doing all this, we see that Arizona has 23 events that can be called miscues, or a lack of execution. It's one thing to not deliver--in hitting, that happens seven out of ten times, and that's not what is being measured here--these are flat-out mistakes, or in the case of base stealing, a measure of how effective the running game when compared to how well the team is against the run.

It's not perfect, but it sure can help illustrate what teams execute and what teams don't. I'll update this as the season goes along from time to time.