More than any other stat in baseball, the stolen base is influenced not just by the player's skill, but also the manager's tendencies to exploit that skill.  If a manager likes to play for the big inning, that's not going to drastically affect a high batting average hitter from putting the ball in play.  Likewise, a manager might believe in manufacturing runs, but that wouldn't make a musclebound slugger any less powerful.  But, if a manager doesn't like his baserunners attempting to steal, then a speedster's ability to affect the game is drastically reduced.

I'm surprised that more people haven't taken this angle when looking at the recent acquisition of Willy Taveras.  Everyone's looked at his gaudy 68 steals from 2008, and has just assumed that 2009 will be more of the same, without ever thinking about whether Dusty will run him often enough to get to that kind of number.

Certainly we can't use last season (when the Reds used 10 different leadoff hitters, including 32 games of - gulp - Corey Patterson) as any sort of barometer of Dusty's running tendencies.  But, in his pre-Cincinnati years, Dusty had two legitimate base stealing threats similar to Taveras - Darren Lewis with the Giants in 1993, and Juan Pierre with the Cubs in 2006.  If we look at those years, and compare them with Taveras' 2008, we might get a better idea of what 2009 might hold for Taveras.  Pierre is a great example in my opinion, because I think Taveras fits the profile of 'poor man's Juan Pierre' very well (incidentally, that would make Joey Gathright a poor man's Willy Taveras).

The SBO% - stolen base opportunity - column is very telling.  All that calculation shows is the percentage of times that the batter reached first base (by a single or walk) that he attempted to steal second base.  Immediately we can see that, when handed a leadoff man with A+ speed, Clint Hurdle was much more willing to let his runners fly than Dusty usually is.  So right there, we can see that it's extremely unlikely that Willy is going to match his steals output from last season.

So let's just assume that, somehow, Taveras gets 500 at-bats with the Reds in 2009 (Patterson got 366 last year - anything's possible).  Let's assume his batting average bounces back up to .280 from last season's .251.  If we figure that all his other numbers stay consistent, here's what his batting line would look like if he gets the green light as much as Pierre did in 2006.

About 60-ish steal oppotunities in 2009, so 56 steals looks pretty nice, right?  Well, that's assuming that Taveras keeps up his other-worldly 90% steal success rate from 2008, which was over 10 points above his career rate.  Possibly that's a measure of his progression as a base stealer, and that development will stick.  But, if that was a fluke (and that's the more likely answer), then that mix drops to about 50 SB / 12 CS.  And if it ends up being a regression to the mean type season, it could be 45-17, but the 50 steal mark seems pretty reasonable overall, so we'll stick with that.

Even so, right there Taveras just lost 30% of the value that he had going into this season just by coming to the Reds.  And, as countless articles have shown, speed without a passable OBP is fairly worthless - ask Joe Torre, who figured out halfway through last season that Andre Ethier was far more valuable to his lineup than Juan Pierre.

Guestimating, Taveras' baserunning overall probably will net the Reds 1-2 wins overall (if he steals 50 or so with 80% success), which isn't bad but is hardly anything to go crazy over, and his glove will probably net out another win.  But his bat is so abysmal that he'll probably give those wins back at the plate, so the season will probably be a net wash.

What it comes down to is, again, this signing made no sense.  It could very well block Chris Dickerson, who actually has potential to do some damage with his bat, and we're stuck with him for two years.  To do that for a net zero ballplayer at best, is a waste of time, money, player development, and uniform lettering.

MLB willy taveras, dusty baker, juan pierre