Fri Jul 12, 2019 11:32 pm
There was no caught stealing stat in 1887, and the stat only slowly caught on--sometimes recorded, sometimes not--in the first part of the 20th century.
So any steal rating given by Strat in seasons where CS is not recorded is going to be a guess. It seems that Strat in this case has guessed that Browning can steal pretty often, but with a less than fabulous success rate.
I like Browning's card, myself, because he can hit in a pitcher's park, but I don't regard base-stealing as one of his significant assets.
Out of curiosity, I checked on Ty Cobb just now, to see how often CS was recorded during his career--and how he did. During his early career, from 1905 to 1919, Cobb's CS were recorded during only 4 seasons: 1912 and 1914-16. During those seasons Cobb stole 260 bases and was caught 113 times. That's a .697 success rate: pretty good for that era, when SB success rates--in the few years they were recorded-- were often well below 60%. The AL SB success rate in 1912 was 57.6%. Nowadays, a 2/3 success rate, or 66.6%, is considered the break even point.
During Cobb's final years, 1920-1928, CS was recorded every year. During those years, from ages 33-41, Cobb stole 128 bases and was caught 99 times. Clearly he had slowed down! We have CS numbers for only two of Honus Wagner's seasons, 1913 and 1915, when he was 39-41 years old. His success rates aren't great, but we really don't know how often he was caught during his prime.
The AL recorded CS consistently from 1920 on, but the NL did not institute it permanently until 1941, at least judging by Paul Waner's record. He has no recorded CS from 1926 to 1940, then CS starts appearing regularly from 1941.
So a lot of our Strat SB success ratings would appear to be mostly guesses until each league--the AL in 1920 and the NL not until 1941, began to record CS consistently
LMAO! good stuff