It seems like every time I turn on Baseball Tonight, I see highlights of one Indians player or another getting thrown out at the plate. I wanted to know if this was a product of me selectively watching highlights or if the Indians really have an issue with getting thrown out at home. So, I went out and tried to find a stat for “number of times thrown out at the plate” in order to compare the Indians to the rest of the teams in the AL.
I didn’t find it.
What I did find, however, is the Outs On Base (OOB) stat in the base running statistics at Baseball-Reference. This tracks the number of times a team has a runner thrown out on the base paths (aside from being caught stealing).
The Indians rank third in the AL with 61. The Yankees are second at 66, and the Angels are 1st at 73.
Now, I don’t know what exactly this indicates. You could argue that it suggests aggressiveness on the base paths, as it most likely does with the Angels. You could also argue that it’s a result of having a lot of runners on base, as it most likely does with both the Angels (#2 in runs scored and OBP) and the Yankees (#1 in runs scored and OBP). The Indians, actually, are 5th in OBP and 8th in runs scored.
Again, not sure what we take away from this, but I felt like it was an interesting piece of information to share.
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