Stolen Base Value - Modified OPS

I wonder if the Stolen Base isn't a bit undervalued right now -- but maybe with Billy Hamilton of the Reds set to maybe steal 100 bases it will be re-evaluated - but also incorporated into something simple, some quick form of comparison.

Here's my simple thoughts.  A walk (or a single) with a stolen base is almost as good as a double (not as likely to advance baserunners, so only almost), and a caught stealing is turns a hit into an our (again, ignoring what any hit would have done to the baserunners on before hand).  So... why not try to incorporate SB and CS into familiar style stats, like On-base percentage, or Slugging... or even the nitty-gritty (and not as accurate as we would like) OPS?

On Base is figured this way: OBP = (H+BB+HBP)/(AB+BB+HBP+SF)

What if we modified it this way?

ModOBP = (H+BB+HBP)/(AB+BB+HBP+SF+CS) to add in the impact of times caught stealing?

Slugging is easier.  SLG = TB/AB.  Let's do ModSLG = (TB+SB-CS)/AB.  We will add in the net additional bases from steals to the idea.

I suppose you could try to do more baserunning stuff, but I simply want to add in steals and get something dirty and quick.  Because I hate crunching numbers.

Now, let's see.  I'll look at the leader in steals from last year, find someone who has a similar OPS but less steals as well as a similar OPS+, and run them through my Modified stuff and see what happens.  We can compare this to WAR and such and see what comes up.

So, the leader in steals with 52 was <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/ellsbja01.shtml"> Jacoby Ellsbury</a>.  His simple OPS was .781 and OPS+ was 114.

Let's compare him to <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/loneyja01.shtml"> James Loney</a> with his .778 OPS and <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hunteto01.shtml"> Torii Hunter</a> with his OPS+ of 114

So for Jacoby we have (172+47+5)/(577+47+5+2+4) + (246+52-4)/577

This leads to 224/635 +  294/577 = .3527559 + .5095301 = .862

So, Jacoby as a ModOPS of .862, which is over 10.3% higher than his normal OPS of .781.

When we do the same for Loney and Hunter we get the following:

Loney: (164+44+0)/(549+44+0+1-1) + (236+3-1)/549
208/593 + 238/549 =  .3507589 + .4335155 = .784 (or only 0.7% higher than his normal OPS)

Hunter: (184+26+0)/(606+26+0+10+2) + (282+3-2)606
210/593 + 283/606   =  .3541315 + .4669970 = .821 (or 2.6% higher than his normal OPS of .800)

So, with this format we would see Ellsbury having a major increase for his stolen base totals.

How does that mesh with the increases that show up in Offensive WAR?

Ellsubry - oWAR of 4.2, Loney - oWAR of 2.7 (Oh, drat, should have kept it in the OF!) and Hunter oWAR of 3.0

If you see an oWAR of 4.2, that strikes me as being something you'd expect of an OPS of .862 more than 0781.

Let's see what some OF with oWARs of around 4.2 had for OPS.  You find <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hollima01.shtml"> Matt Holiday </a> who had an OPS of .879 (and 6 steals and 1 CS)

Eh -- it's no where near perfect, but I think just for my own head it sort of gives a fuller picture of OPS, which is just meant to be a quick and dirty.  And in my own head, .800 is a good line of demarcation for OPS.  Anything over .800 seems good...and moving Ellsbury from .781 to .862 seems to (in my own mind) move him from having a so-so season to a season that might be worthy of a big contract. 

Of course, who knows if he will get to steal bases for the Yankees.

(Edit:  I wonder if I really ought to subtract CS twice from the ModSlug because you really lose all the bases behind you -- of course, I don't think they get rid of the single if you are thrown out trying to stretch it into a double...)