Hall of Famer Lou Brock died Sunday:
Brock played a total of 19 MLB seasons, including 16 seasons with the Cardinals. During his time in St. Louis, Brock finished in the top-25 of voting for the National League MVP for six straight seasons. He started his career with the Chicago Cubs before the club traded him to the Cardinals in the middle of the 1964 season. A two-time World Series champion with St. Louis, Brock hit. 300 with five RBI to help the Cardinals beat the New York Yankees in seven games in the 1964 World Series.
CBSSports.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Brock was the base stealer of my youth. He led the NL in eight of nine seasons from 1966 through 1974, setting the record of 118 steals that final year. Note that he ran a lot, and also led the NL in caught stealing four of those years, and in two other years outside the nine. He wound up breaking Ty Cobb‘s career steal record as well.
Brock was a good hitter, with a .293/.343/.410 slash line. In his prime, from 1964 to 1968, he accumulated 24.9 WAR, all seasons over 3.0 rWAR and and three of those seasons with at least 5.0 rWAR. With a career rWAR of 45.4, he owns one of the lower WARs in the Hall of Fame. I feel he deserves the slot due to his records and helping to bring the exciting (but strategically questionable) stolen base back to the game.
Brock retired after the 1979 season, the same year Rickey Henderson debuted. Henderson would erase all of Brock’s record. Brock would go on to popularize a version of the umbrella hat, called the Brockabrella.
I remember it being accepted wisdom that a 75% success rate was needed for base stealing to be worth it. My sense in recent years is the unofficial cut off is 80% Have you seen much writing on that?
It really goes up and down with run scoring. The lower the average number of runs scored, the lower the break even point in terms of success. It seems that managers grasp this intuitively, as they will accept a lower SB% in low run eras.