Was Harry Pattee A Bad Baserunner?
Some speculative math.
Was Harry Pattee A Bad Baserunner?
You remember when we talked about Harry Pattee, right? He was a minor league speedster whose major league career was cut short by an unfortunate injury. He played a little over half the 1908 season for Brooklyn, and never came back up to the major leagues again.
He was also pretty fast, by all accounts. I mean, check this out from early August 1908:
Now, with Pattee being so quick, you’ve probably got to wonder why Skeetersoft gave him an “S” (i.e. slow) speed rating. I started wondering the same thing after Pattee lost this game by being picked off.
Let’s look into it.
Baseball Speed
We haven’t spent much time dissecting the APBA baseball boards yet. Those old National Pastime boards don’t include any sort of speed ratings. Those didn’t come about until the 1950s, when J. Richard Seitz was keeping the dice baseball tradition alive with his own innovations.
Seitz’ speed ratings — F for fast players, S for slow ones, and nothing for everybody else — have been debated for decades now. If you look closely at the boards, though, you’ll realize that they have little to do with raw speed, and a lot more to do with baseball speed.
And, yeah, there actually is a difference.
I’m not sure what the best way is to explain that difference. I think it’s probably easiest to understand if you watch it in action.
Back in the early 1970s, Charlie Finley hired a track star named Herb Washington to serve as a sort of full-time pinch runner for the Oakland Athletics. Washington was fast, no doubt about it. However, he lacked baseball speed.
And, well, Washington’s lack of experience with the ins and outs of baseball baserunning came to haunt him.
It took place in a key moment in the 9th inning of Game 2 of the World Series. Instead of describing it to you, I’ll let you watch it for yourself:
Pattee Versus The Average
Now, I think that Pattee was likely a better baserunner than Washington. However, I do think that he suffered from a similar ailment: being fast without having good baserunner intelligence.
We can see Pattee’s problem when we start looking at the numbers.
Pattee reached base 83 times in 1908 (I’m not looking into interference calls or other extremely rare events; we’re going to keep this simple). Pattee had
57 hits
25 walks
and was hit by pitch 1 time.
Add those up and you get 83.
Now, Pattee scored a grant total of 19 runs out of those 83 times on base. In other words, he scored a run 22.89% of the time he reached base.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s just a number. But keep that number in mind.
If we look at the 1908 National League in total, we see the following:
9,577 hits
3,057 walks
383 times hit by pitch
This means that there was a total of 13,071 runners who reached base in the 1908 National League.
Yeah, I know, it’s a big number. You’re wondering what it has to do with anything.
Well, it turns out that 4,137 of those runners scored. In other words, a full 31.65% of National League players who reached base in 1908 scored a run.
Pattee doesn’t look so good now, does he?
“But wait,” you say. “Maybe his teammates were no good at driving in runs! He can’t be faulted for having a bunch of teammates who don’t drive guys in!”
Yeah, maybe. Let’s take a look at that.
Including Pattee, Brooklyn Superbas players reached base 1,396 times in 1908. Here’s the breakdown:
1,044 hits
323 walks
29 times hit by pitch
They scored only 375 runs. You can eyeball that and see that it was below average. In fact, it is true that Brooklyn players weren’t particularly good at driving each other in. They scored runs in only 26.86% of the times they reached base.
But it still does no favors for Pattee — hence the “S” rating.
Now, I can only speculate here. I don’t know any of this for sure. However, I really think that Pattee was likely caught stealing far more often than we would assume.
He stole 24 bases in 1908, which is impressive for a guy who was only on base 83 times. However, I would bet that he was caught stealing more often than he was successful.
And that’s where your S rating comes from.
No worries, though. He’s still my favorite Brooklyn shortstop. Pee Wee who?