Bad Outs On The Bases

Here's a little junk stat I just dreamt up. My goal was to measure how often a player makes a frustrating out on the basepaths relative to how often he is on base. There is no reward for good baserunning, only a penalty for making outs. That's why it's a "junk" stat. It is not an overall measure of baserunning. The "bad outs" bucket includes pick-offs, caught stealing, running into outs after a flyball, trying to stretch for an extra base after a hit, etc. I added those up and divided by total number of times on base minus home runs. (No one makes a bad out on the bases after hitting a home run.) The exact equation is (PickOffs+CaughtStealing+OutsOnBases)/((H-HR)+BB+HBP+ReachOnError). Here's how AL teams look through August 17:

If, like me, you feel like the Royals make a lot of frustrating outs, you are correct. I am surprised to see the saber-friendly Rays at the bottom of this list. Here is how individual Royals runners have done:

Let's hear it for the slow guys! They aren't adding anything with their speed, but at least they aren't driving us crazy creating outs on the bases either.