Route 66 has a quirky problem

Phil Gurnee ♦ August 30, 2017 ♦ 1 Comment

Jeff Sullivan was the man for the job. I had just visited Fangraphs and couldn’t figure out why Puig had such a low fWAR for a man having his season.

It just so happened that Jeff Sullivan was wondering the same thing and looked into it and found that Puig has one glaring problem this season. 

Yasiel Puig rates as one of the worst baserunners in baseball.

This didn’t make much sense until I remembered that for some reason hitting into double plays is calculated as part of the base running stat. We know he’s hitting into more double plays than he ever has, but he also ranks as one of the worst baserunners when he does get on base.

Jeff goes through this quite thoroughly and based on his information I’m going to go with the fact that Puig has simply been extremely unlucky this year.

At least the eye test with Puig on defense is holding up. Not one regular right fielder in the NL has a positive defensive fWAR number except for Puig. Puig is a 5.5, the closest RF in the NL is …… Curtis Granderson at -.50. 

How about them apples?

Ok, now about the whole double play being part of a baserunning stat. I don’t get it. If you don’t get credit for being able to hit with runners on base (RBI), why would you get dinged because the hard ground ball you hit, turned into a double play?