I agree with you JORR, we only know what they did. Henderson stole almost 2 times as many bases as Wilson and Raines. That is enough for me. We will have to agree to disagree. IMO, Henderson is the best base stealer of all time.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

If I had a gun to my head I'd say he probably juiced in the mid to late 80's when Mac and Canseco showed up. His first few seasons he was just an extremely talented freak of nature. Whether he juiced or not he is the greatest lead off hitter I ever saw, and when it comes to base stealing it's Rickey then everybody else.

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I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out. - Bill Hicks

Let's do it for Johnny!

One thing we know for sure, Rickey agrees with you.

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Don't take it personally.

Apropos of nothing I prefer Kenny Lofton

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

I loved Kenny Lofton. Of course, he was no Henderson, but a damn good leadoff man nonetheless. Another top leadoff guy who is largely forgotten is Brett Butler.

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Don't take it personally.

Herb Washington

Seemed like every Sox-Indians tilt I ever saw had it that if Lofton got on first he'd be on third.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

That fast fucker was a horrible base stealer. He got caught about as much as he stole. An interesting career line, like 30 runs scored and no hits.

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Don't take it personally.

Never understood why the Cubs got rid of him. Heard Sammy and him didn't get along.

Davey Lopes was a hell of a base stealer.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Kenny got in Sammys face one day in the locker room...and HE GONE.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

He and a guy like Molitor would be who I'd want my sons to learn baserunning, bunting and situational hitting from. Wildly under-appreciated imo.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I was going to say Rickey would also agree that, of the two he played with, John Olerud was the best left-handed first baseman who wore a batting helmet in the field. But since I'm my own fact-checkin' cuz, I was sad to find out that story never happened. Bummer.

For you hardcore baseball fans, here's a video from Rush about their hobbies on the road. Geddy talks Cubs and baseball collectibles for a few minutes and shows off his collection. Pretty cool. Starts at about the 2:45 mark. Skip the rest unless you have an interest in Alex talking golf or Neil talking motorcycles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7tsXHkL ... r_embedded

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

Sounds like a Steve Goodman song.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Kenny was a top 5 player for a period of years in the nineties

Griffey without the power

I agree with JORR that it's not clear-cut.

The simplest way to explain it is to look at the expected run values for various scenarios. With a man on 1st and no outs, you expect to score 0.864 runs in the inning. If you steal second successfully, your team now expects to score 1.173 runs. However, if you get caught, the expectation drops to only 0.27 runs.

So if you multiply Henderson's 81% success rate by the various run differentials (the risk/reward is different for stealing 3rd, etc.) it is possible that he created less runs via the stolen base than someone else who stole far fewer bases but at an 88% clip. It's not intuitive because the breakeven point is around 75%.

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He scored the most runs in MLB history. I think he did an okay job.

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Please do this analysis for each of the years he played and get back to us with the runs created or lost.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Whatever it is, it's not going to be as high as Raines. That's obvious without even doing any math. But I don't really think you can look at baseball that way. Each and every situation is different and all runs aren't equal. SABRmetrics generally treats them as if they are out of necessity with the assumption being that it all evens out over time. Sometimes it doesn't though. You can have hard luck "losing Pitcher" John Danks and I'll take the luckiest man since Lou Gehrig, Aaron Sele.

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Don't take it personally.

I had written a longer response, but of course, the board crashed.

The play-by-play data is there if you want to figure out the value on an at bat basis. I doubt you care. Neither do I.

Most people don't know what the statistics are actually saying and draw off-base conclusions. Bernstein for example, uses similarity scores, not realizing that those are not adjusted by the era of play. I recall someone here coming to the conclusion that Gary Gaetti was the equal of Ron Santo based on similarity scores.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

If you look up the word "cool" in the dictionary, there should be now words there.

Just a picture of Rickey Henderson.

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That's Dick Allen.

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Don't take it personally.

+1

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Baseball in the 70s was very strange and very cool:

http://www.bighairplasticgrass.com/

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Don't take it personally.

"When I gave up a grand slam to Pete LaCock,” Gibby would later say, “I knew it was time to quit."

Truer words were never spoken. That's a cool website.

Dick Allen was cool.

Ricky Henderson was, and is, the essence of it.

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Mr Fan, the correct Ernie-ism is,"Rickey Henderson, how you feelin'?"


you're welcome