The OOTP manual is, of course, not up to date on this (I've found the manuals tend to lag releases by a couple of versions). But, with some digging, I got no concrete answer so that's it.
Kinda kidding. If you go to customize a view in OOTP there are these wonky stats stuck at the end:
So, from what I gather OOTP considers a team's "Base Running" to be the sum, or something, of your players' individual stat BsR. What is BsR? According to FanGraphs it is:
BsR = wSB + UBR + wGDP
Well, that explains it! Right? So we haven't gotten to a concrete definition yet. What is wSB? It is Weighted Stolen Bases which attempts to indicate the number of runs added or lost due to stealing bases or getting caught, respectively. It's a weight-based stat like WAR so the league average is always zero and a positive number means the player is contributing more runs than the average player in regards to stolen bases, and costing the team runs if negative. So that's just stolen base attempts and caught stealing? Well, kinda. It also tries to incorporate when a stolen base could have been added but the player missed the opportunity. There's also a difference between a SB and CS (so having 10 SB and 10 CS doesn't equal 0 wSB) because stealing a base doesn't contribute as much to run production as getting caught costs the team as it results in an out. I'm still not crystal clear on how to affect that in team management. I change the setting directly for my stolen base contributors and then everyone else conforms to the team strategy.
Ok, how about UBR? This is where it gets clear in the concept but hazy in the numbers. It's quite(?) simply a calculation of the value a player adds, or loses, to their team via base running not related to stolen bases. It's a result of some esoteric wizardry that calculates the expected base running outcome in a specific scenario and then whether the player did better or worse. The scenarios are what you would think they would be: on first base, 1 out, 3rd inning, leading by one, line drive to the LF gap...should the average player go for 3rd or stay at 2nd? Again, we have the Baserunning attribute for players and I'm guessing this is a measure of how you incorporate that with the team's running strategy weighted across the entire league. So maybe be more aggressive if a player's Baserunning attribute is high, but what about team strategy? And what if a player has 3 Speed and 9 Baserunning? Do you set him as more aggressive? Only the FanGraphs knows...
And, finally, wGDP is exactly what is says: weighted grounded into double play runs. WTF? It's based on how many double play opportunities a player is involved in and how often they hit into a DP in those situations. Again, weighted across the league so the average player's wGDP is zero.
My team, collectively, costs us 1.8 runs compared to an average of zero. That's kinda ok to see at the team level, but at the player level I'm not sure how you positively affect BsR. The fastest player on my team who's not a platoon guy is Marcello Custello (9/10/10). He has 11 stolen bases, successful at a 78.6% clip (so I probably should bump his attempts) in 71 games. His BsR is +4.1. But my leader in SB, and the leader in the JL, Lou Bayou has 32 at a 91.4% rate. His baserunning attribute is 6 so I kind of keep him at middle aggressiveness. His BsR is +2.0. Seems weird that he is adding half the runs of the guy with a third his SBs. Is there a way to make him as efficient as BsR as the first guy? Maybe, but I don't know how. On the other side of the coin, my main catcher Juan González clocks in at -4.2 BsR. Do I just accept that his BsR is going to suck or is there a way that I can manage his strategy settings to improve on that stat? Maybe slide his aggressiveness down, but I already did that. And, as the entire team is what I'm seeing near the bottom of the league, is there a better setting at the manager level?
I suppose we can discuss in this post, but I did a bunch of reading and clicking and wanted to share what I was able to dig up.
