The Philadelphia Phillies and Davey Lopes, their first base coach and base stealing guru, parted ways over money.

The Phillies were are incredibly good base stealing team in 2010, swiping 108 bases while getting caught just 21 times. If you use 0.3 runs as the value of the stolen base and -0.6 runs as the value of a caught stealing, as Thorn and Palmer did in The Hidden Game of Baseball, the Phillies scored about 20 runs on their steals, worth about two wins. Of course, it’s difficult to separate Davey’s coaching from the talent of the players, but it seems to me two wins is nothing to sneeze at and Davey probably deserved a hefty pay raise.