Originally Posted by
RedsManRick
Run Scoring:
1. OBP is life. You can score 800 runs without a ton of power if you don't throw away outs at the top and bottom of the lineup. If you throw away a lot of outs, no amount of speed or power will save you. If you have the skill to make high quality contact regularly (ie. hit .300), I won't bemoan a low walk rate. But if you can't, you better learn to take some pitches.
2. Base running is more important than speed. You can steal 100 bases and if you get caught 40 times, you're doing more harm than good. Speed is a precision tool, best used when the reward clearly outweighs the risk. However, that sort of leveraged situation doesn't come along as often as you think it does. Good base running is applicable every single time a guy is on base.
3. Don't ignore the small stuff. Call in the Brandon Phillips rule. He grounded in to 26 double plays last year. That hurts and it's not purely luck. When people talk about fundamentals, too often it's taken as not striking out when that specifically isn't a big deal. But there are little things that add up.
Run Prevention:
1. Keep guys off base. For run prevention, OBP is death. My #1 priority in a pitcher is a low walk rate. You can have a big park to offset fly ball tendencies. You can have a better defense to help offset low strikeout rates. You can't do anything about a pitcher putting guys on base all by himself.
2. Ground balls. On a 1v1 basis, a ground ball and a fly ball are roughly worth the same amount, as grounders turn in to more hits, but fly balls turn in to more extra base hits. However, ground balls create double plays. Ground balls require a longer string of "bad luck" to amount to runs. And most importantly, ground balls can't be HR. A flyball from Scott Hatteberg is mostly harmless. A flyball from Dunn is not. Meanwhile, their groundballs are worth about the same. Unfortunately, as a pitcher (not named Greg Maddux), you can't really choose to allow a flyball to Hatteberg and a grounder to Dunn. Better to allow grounders to everybody.
3. Defense, particularly up the middle where the most balls are hit, is more about range than hands. Due to the way human perception works, we discount the value of the absent. Given two SS, one might get to 15 of 20 balls and boot 2, ending up with 13 outs in 20 chances. Another might get to 12 and boot 1, ending up with 11 outs in 20 chances. But if we're just watching them, or worse, looking at a century old statistic, we might thing that the latter player is better. Furthermore, you can work with a guy to improve what he does when he gets to the ball. You aren't likely to make him any quicker or have much better route judgment.