2017 Home-To-First Times
Last week, I analyzed the 2016 home-to-first times for hitters. With the background information out of the way, I’ll examine at the 2017 speed data to find who’s running the faster and slowest, who’s changed the most since 2016, and how home-to-first times compare to Bill James’s speed score.
With all the Statcast batted ball data getting analyzed, I continue examining the home-to-first times. Fantasy owners may believe speed is mainly used to determine stolen base threats. It’s more than that.
It’s an input to many other fantasy related factors which can help explain a player’s age-related decline. Faster players will beat out a few extra ground balls for hits thereby raising their batting average and on-base percentage. Speed allows a player to score more once on base. It can add to a hitter’s power profile. Also, speed can help keep a player maintain their fielding range at a premium defensive position instead of moving to a statue-like position (e.g. first base). Finally, a drop in running speed may point to an injured player.
A few days ago, the people at MLB Advanced Media gave me the 2017 numbers for the season so far. Here are the leaders and laggards. Players needed a minimum 15 home-to-first times and then I averaged the top three values (full list).
| Name | Avg Top 3 |
|---|---|
| Billy Hamilton | 3.77 |
| Kevin Kiermaier | 3.86 |
| Dee Gordon | 3.86 |
| Jose Altuve | 3.91 |
| Rajai Davis | 3.95 |
| Odubel Herrera | 3.98 |
| Leury Garcia | 3.98 |
| Norichika Aoki | 3.99 |
| Jarrod Dyson | 3.99 |
| Marco Hernandez | 3.99 |
| Francisco Cervelli | 4.57 |
| Yangervis Solarte | 4.57 |
| Tucker Barnhart | 4.60 |
| Chris Davis | 4.61 |
| Maikel Franco | 4.66 |
| Nelson Cruz | 4.71 |
| Matt Wieters | 4.72 |
| Yasmani Grandal | 4.73 |
| Martin Maldonado | 4.74 |
| Tommy Joseph | 4.85 |
Just like with the 2016 list, no surprises here. Outfielders are still fast and catchers are still slow.
The big key with a second season’s worth of data, times can now be compared. Here are the players who’ve seen a 0.15 sec increase in their times or a 0.05 decline.
| Name | 2016 | 2017 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nelson Cruz | 4.38 | 4.71 | 0.33 |
| Alcides Escobar | 4.13 | 4.40 | 0.27 |
| Erick Aybar | 4.05 | 4.31 | 0.26 |
| Kevin Pillar | 4.07 | 4.32 | 0.25 |
| Maikel Franco | 4.41 | 4.66 | 0.25 |
| Hanley Ramirez | 4.25 | 4.48 | 0.23 |
| Daniel Murphy | 4.22 | 4.45 | 0.23 |
| Chris Herrmann | 4.07 | 4.30 | 0.23 |
| Chris Davis | 4.39 | 4.61 | 0.22 |
| Stephen Vogt | 4.35 | 4.57 | 0.22 |
| Carlos Correa | 4.04 | 4.26 | 0.22 |
| Jean Segura | 3.96 | 4.18 | 0.22 |
| Carlos Gomez | 4.13 | 4.35 | 0.22 |
| Jay Bruce | 4.26 | 4.47 | 0.21 |
| Nolan Arenado | 4.23 | 4.44 | 0.21 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 4.24 | 4.44 | 0.20 |
| Danny Espinosa | 4.11 | 4.30 | 0.19 |
| Brandon Crawford | 4.19 | 4.38 | 0.19 |
| Jose Iglesias | 3.91 | 4.09 | 0.18 |
| Rougned Odor | 4.02 | 4.20 | 0.18 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 4.35 | 4.53 | 0.18 |
| Nick Ahmed | 4.12 | 4.30 | 0.18 |
| Matt Wieters | 4.55 | 4.72 | 0.17 |
| Yunel Escobar | 4.36 | 4.52 | 0.16 |
| Freddy Galvis | 4.10 | 4.26 | 0.16 |
| Kole Calhoun | 4.34 | 4.50 | 0.16 |
| Devon Travis | 4.06 | 4.21 | 0.15 |
| Josh Harrison | 4.03 | 4.18 | 0.15 |
| Billy Hamilton | 3.82 | 3.77 | -0.05 |
| Jedd Gyorko | 4.47 | 4.42 | -0.05 |
| Yangervis Solarte | 4.63 | 4.57 | -0.06 |
| Willson Contreras | 4.09 | 4.03 | -0.06 |
| Yasmani Grandal | 4.79 | 4.73 | -0.06 |
| Jed Lowrie | 4.48 | 4.41 | -0.07 |
| Miguel Rojas | 4.25 | 4.18 | -0.07 |
| Enrique Hernandez | 4.39 | 4.32 | -0.07 |
| Avisail Garcia | 4.21 | 4.13 | -0.08 |
| Brandon Belt | 4.38 | 4.30 | -0.08 |
| Francisco Lindor | 4.14 | 4.05 | -0.09 |
| Kyle Seager | 4.45 | 4.36 | -0.09 |
| DJ LeMahieu | 4.38 | 4.29 | -0.09 |
| Domingo Santana | 4.39 | 4.26 | -0.13 |
Here are my thoughts on some of the movers.
- Billy Hamilton is running faster. Good luck catchers.
- Domingo Santana struggled with an elbow injury in 2016 and never really go going. He’s never been a prolific minor league stolen base guy with a high of 12 in 2013. So far this season he as four steals. If he can get a dozen steals, his value would increase with 20 home run potential.
- Alcides Escobar appears to have below average speed (average is 4.30 seconds for right-handed hitters). His slowdown can be seen in no stolen base attempts and he’s been just one-for-five in bunt hits. If he’s lost a step, his shortstop defense could decline to the point where he eventually loses playing time.
- Jean Segura’s times have increased from elite status to almost league average. While I could see him continue to steal bases, he may need to be more selective. So far this season he is just 5 for 8 in attempts (62.5% success rate). With a quarter of the season done, he is on pace for only 20 steals which I think will be a disappointment for his owners.
With the new times available, I decided to see how well Bill James’s Speed Score metric compares to actual home-to-first times.
There is an obvious correlation with the r-squared working out to 0.31. While the pairs don’t match perfectly, I see no reason to ignore Speed Score. Given the lack of available speed information, Speed Score is still a good proxy for speed all these years later.
That’s it for today. Since I am just getting my hands on the home to first times myself, I’m trying to figure out how to perfectly utilize them. Let me know if any other way to manipulate and/or make the data available.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Victor Martinez is not on the laggards list! What a world we live in!
Any list that doesn’t have Victor Martinez as the slowest is an invalid list.
In looking at the full list, V-Mart doesn’t appear yet in 2017. He has 126 AB this year, so surely he would have met the 15 time minimum.
I will just assume he was such an outlier that he was completely removed from the analysis since the “V-Mart is the worst runner in MLB history articles” were all used up at the beginning of the season.
He’s like the weak popups that Statcast can’t track.
Completely subjective analysis of Pillar: The decrease in home-first time could be that he’s not just doing a slash and dash and then trying to beat out his weak infield grounders all the time, but actually focusing on making better contact.
It’s tough to filter out the slash-and-dash runs (Aoki).
It’s interesting that Cruz has gotten so much slower but is still having a great season. You would think this would be a good indicator of some sort of injury. Maybe he’s just gotten a bit portly :).
I wonder if mean is the best summary statistic to use here. A factor in these times is probably closeness of the play. A lot of hitters give very low effort on some grounders that they have no chance of beating.
I’d be interested to see the median times, or some other method that can filter out the factor above.
I believe it’s an average of their best 5 home-to-first times, assuming their best 5 they were running full-speed. Since we’re only 6 weeks into the season, on aggregate people are probably slower so far compared to what their full-season average will be, since they are bound to have some times in the final 4+ months that bump out some slower times from their top 5.
I’m using top three for this analysis. His three times are:
4.67
4.68
4.78
Nothing close to under 4.5 yet.
he’s been battling hammy problems, so we know for sure that there’s an injury in play.
Willson Contreras can fly…
Seriously. Bad at stealing bases in the minors though. Wonder what gives or if those times are suspect.
He’s known for bustin’ ass out of the box and hustling like it’s his last tryout ever for the big leagues.
(Which may indicate that the transition from swing to sprint is perhaps too greatly influencing this measure of speed. I notice, for instance, that Ichiro ranks 12th overall, and as much as I adore all things Ichiro, that strains belief. Ichiro, however, is famous for his near instantaneous transition from swing to run. I also notice eight of the ten leaders hit lefty or are switch hitters. So …)
He’s pretty darn good at turning would-be-GIDPs into fielder’s choices. Most notably the Seattle/Matusz/Lesterbunt game last year in the 9th inning sticks out in my head a bunch
Here’s his top time
He’s sort of headed to 1B with this swing but puts in a 4.0s time or less getting to 1B
https://streamable.com/5n8oo
Point of note on Segura: He was out with a hamstring injury which might impact both his times and rate of SB’s. Interested to see his speed over time, but I’m confident he’ll be just fine ROS
> There is an obvious correlation with the r-squared working out to 0.31.
:/
The speed score seems to be a fairly poor predictor. This data suggests to me that if you score above 6, we know you’re fast (<4.2 seconds home-first time). If you score below 6, we can't predict your home-first time (anywhere between 4.0-4.6 is fair game).
I wonder what would happen if you run the speed score correlation separately for LHB vs. RHB. R-squared might be higher within each split cohort than it is for the two combined.