Why Won't Listach Try To Steal A Base

59 of Listach's hits are against left handers and typically they have much better holds than right handers. Along with a cleanup hitter is typically not in the position in the lineup to normally steal, not that they can't just lineups are usually not conducive to putting a base stealer batting 4th. So the combination is restricting his attempts and is probably why he has been thrown out more than he has succeeded.

8 of the 9 players on the team are running wild. 3rd place batter...5th place batter...9 place batter...Why wouldn't the guy batting 4th bring his cleats to the park? I don't buy the cleanup argument. Like ghkdh11 said, as a DH vs. LHP, maybe Listach is facing a bunch of LHP's and catchers with uber minus ratings. I agree with FrankieT that this thread needs more data from Sweet Swinging Billy Williams.

Yeah, we have a small sample size. He only faces lefty pitchers, one of the catchers that he faces in his division has a negative 4 arm rating, etc..

Even though it's late in the season, I'm gonna make a few changes and see how it affects things.

Thanks for the input.

I'll report back.

I made changes, made sure the guys hitting behind him were not bunting or H&R'ing and still he only attempted 5 steals the entire season. That is crazy. By comparison, I had another team (gotta look to find and post it) that had a similarly rated base stealer to Listach and he had something like 40 steal attempts with similar team and player settings.

He attempted 5 steals in 78 times reaching base.

And he still only attempted 1 steal in his last 18 games (after I made the changes).

I feel confident that I have seen this before where HAL just refuses to have a guy steal no matter what your settings are.

Over the entire season SB Attempts PER Times reached base is shown below:

Brock averaged a steal attempt for every 3.3 times reaching base
Figgins every 3.9 times
Aparicio every 4.2 times
Lofton every 4.2 times
Sisler every 4.4 times
Wilson ever 4.6 times
Carey every 5.2 times
Evers every 5.5 times

Excluding Listach and my catchers, as a team they attempted a steal once for every 4.4 times they reached base.

Listach attempted a steal once every 15.6 times he reached base successfully with the EXACT SAME SETTINGS as the rest of the team.

I am no expert, but that sounds like a lot more than a statistical anomaly.

Sent to Strat Support and got this reponse:

There is always a chance that a player will under perform or even over perform over the course of (1) season. If Listach were to consistently put up those stealing numbers, that would be a concern. But 1 season is just too small a sample size for us to become concerned.

Sincerely,
365 by Strat-O-Matic

Which I think is kind of a BS answer. It seems apparent to me that there is an issue. The difference is too great IMHO to be random. But, it is what it is. At least they took the time to answer.

why don't you dig into the pbp if this is that important to you, for all the reasons that were outlined? reaching base is not a useful denominator to compare past giving you a clue that something is different. you need to look at the conditions by comparing the on base conditions.

fairly obvious your answer will be there and then you will definitively be able to tell strat something is amiss or it isnt.
they did about as much research as you did on it. if it were me and i was that interested id do the research.

now queue the agreeable easy button answers that will make you feel better but your dissatisfying answer will remain.

they did about as much research as you did on it.

On that I'll disagree as they did ZERO research, simply stating it's only one team, not worth looking into. That's not research. Conversely, I provided some statistic details AND tried tweaking my settings which changed nothing.

As for digging into the PBP of every PA for Listach for the entire season, it's not worth the effort, because Strat doesn't care.

The point of the entire post is that I believe there is something amiss and I wanted to bring it to other people's attention.

There is nothing "amiss". It is just an anomaly that , apparently, you're not really that interested in delving into. Here is a recent team of mine with Listach. 26 sb's, No complaints. I've used that card a few times, 23 sb's his low for me. no complaints. From my experience, there is nothing "wrong" with the Listach card.
https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1740290