Ryan Braun Running Wild

About five minutes ago, Ryan Braun stole his 22nd base of the year.  Coming into this year, his career high was 20.  As the owner of Braun in two fantasy leagues, I'm fine with this.  However, I find Milwaukee's strategy perplexing.  When healthy, the 2-3-4-5 in the Milwaukee lineup this year has been Nyger Morgan, Braun, Prince Fielder, and Casey McGehee.  Braun and Fielder are having MVP caliber seasons at the plate, while Casey McGehee has struggled for the most part.  Nyger Morgan has been doing what is expected of him, hitting for average and putting up a good OBP.  The strange thing though is that Morgan has only six stolen bases this season, after swiping 42 in 2009 and 34 in 2010.

Now, conventional wisdom is that if Morgan is on first with Braun at the plate, Braun can already plate Morgan with a double or homerun.  If Morgan steals second, it will take the bat out of Braun's hands, and he'll just be pitched around.  I don't think this is really true though, because walking Braun in this situation would bring Prince to the plate with two men on base, which is not the optimal situation that a manager wants to put his pitchers in.  

Braun also has enough speed to score from first on a double hit by Fielder, especially with all of the strange angles in their home park (it was designed a little crazy because the owner liked to see triples).   Sixteen of Braun's 22 steals have come with right handed pitchers on the mound.  If I'm a right handed pitcher with Fielder at the plate and first base open, I'd pitch around him more often than not, and take my chances with McGehee.   Even against lefties, Fielder has an OPS .366 higher than McGehee, that's almost a difference of Alex Rios.  

The only reason I can find for giving Braun the green light on the base paths, but not Morgan is that Braun has been much more efficient at base stealing during his career.  Braun's career stolen base percentage is 79.4% while Morgan's career mark is only 68.5%, including leading the league in caught stealing in 2009 and 2010.  

I know that we all learned in Moneyball that we want to put as many base runners on base as possible, but today's game is more specialized, and closer to a three outcome system of walks, strikeouts, and home runs.  I fear that much as teams used to overvalue college players during the draft, we are now overrating the on base percentage of better hitters when they are followed by hitters who are far inferior batter.  In "Baseball Between the Numbers," the Baseball Prospectus crew had a table (it's on page 46 of my edition) that tells what the difference in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage have to be between consecutive hitters in certain situations to justify an intentional walk.  I feel like even people comfortable with advanced metrics forget that a walk to Babe Ruth can be a bad thing if he's followed by Mario Mendoza.