It wouldn’t be Spring Training without a few crazy quotes. But the past couple of days have really set a high bar for nuttiness.

First, there’s Manny Being Manny, patting himself on the back for showing up on time to camp for the first time in a while: “I might be late two years in a row, but I’m always on time.” I think he’s just joking. But he said it with a straight face. And with Manny, who knows?

Then there’s Ichiro Being Ichiro: “If the other corner outfielders have too much speed and too much ability and try to do too much, it’s hard for me.” Fortunately, since Ichiro will be flanked by Raul Ibanez and Brad Wilkerson, that shouldn’t be a problem.

But what could be better than Sheff Being Sheff? Yes, Gary Sheffield, always good for a few words, is back and at it again. Discussing his ongoing dispute with his former agent, Scott Boras, he described his experience with the Uber-Agent thus: “Total hell. I shouldn’t have ever introduced myself to him. Period. Bad person.” Sheffield also vowed that no one would be able to stop him from saying more “ugly things” once the case is resolved: “No fine is going to be big enough. No suspension is going to be long enough.” No one puts Sheffy in the corner!

I was just looking at MLB leaders in Win Shares according to The Hardball Times in response to the news that Eric Byrnes of the Diamondbacks had signed a 3-year / $30 million deal to stay in Arizona. You see, in what is shaping up to be the greatest season of his career, Byrnes is currently leading the NL in that category. But my attention was more or less occupied at that moment upon realizing that the MLB leader in Win Sharers so far was Ichiro. I wouldn’t say that I was surprised so much as curious and consequently looked at his base statistics closely for the first time in a while. Then, I was surprised.

We all think of Ichiro as a great contact hitter with good speed, and with good reason. But if my knowledge of him as a player is the norm among the general populace, then we are seriously shortchanging his amazing abilities as a base stealer. The fact that he has stolen 76 bases since the start of the 2006 season is not revelatory. But he has done so AT A 95% SUCCESS RATE. 76 swipes in 80 attempts. Think about it.

To put this into perspective, I looked at every player who had at least stolen one base since the start of the 2006 season (468 players qualified) and calculated their respective overall Run Values – which is a numerical figure as attributed to each general event in a baseball game (such as homerun, walk, stolen base, strike out, etc) as outlined in “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” by baseball statisticians Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Lichtman, and Andrew E. Dolphin. The three stat-heads basically calculated how many runs can be expected in that inning based on each of these “events”. They concluded that each Stolen Base was worth .175 runs while every time a base runner is caught stealing is worth -.467, which I think makes sense (although I may not have explained this whole thing very well).  Let’s look at Jose Reyes, who had led the MLB in stolen bases over this time.

Reyes stole 118 bases since 2006 but was caught 32 times. If you plug it into the Run Expectancy formula here’s what you get:

Reyes’ Stolen Base Run Expectancy: (118 x .175) + (32 x -.467) = 5.706

The calculation concludes that by having Reyes run as often and efficiently as he has, we can expect that he had created roughly 5.7 more runs since 2006 than if he had simply stayed put each time he got on base. Now admittedly, I’m kind of bastardizing what Tango, Lichtman and Dolphin created because I didn’t take into account things such as how many outs there were at the time of each attempt or even which base he stole, but the general idea can be reached. Now let’s look at Ichiro using the same formula:

Ichiro’s Stolen Base Run Expectancy: (76 x.175) + (4 x -.467) = 11.432

That’s a huge difference. In fact, according to this method of measurement, Ichiro is by far and away the best base stealer in baseball. Here’s the top ten.

As you can see, Reyes was able to create an additional 20.65 runs from his successful stolen base attempts, but the amount of times he failed in doing so cost the Mets 14.9  runs as well, leaving him with the aforementioned 5.706. Carl Crawford and Dave Roberts also come away looking very good according to this calculation, with a pretty big gap between their numbers and fourth place Brian Roberts.

But the undisputed king here is Ichiro. He may not have stolen as many bases as Reyes and Crawford, but his ability to pick his spots has actually created more runs. So although we think of him as a great contact hitter first and foremost, maybe we need to better appreciate him as the best base stealer playing today.

Oh, and in case you were interested in which “prolific” base stealers do more harm than good in even trying, here’s a list of players with negative Run Expectancies based on their Stolen Base statistics (minimum of 20 SBs). I hope they’re ashamed of themselves.

If you’re still reading this, you’re a bigger geek than I am. Congratulations.

The Fanhouse made an interesting observation yesterday, pointing out that Padres 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff is off to such a horrid start “that he could go 1 for 8 in a double-header, and still raise his average!”

That’s really bad. But is Kouzmanoff this year’s biggest disappointment? Hard to say. There are plenty of candidates, including:

1. Adam LaRoche

Last year, after starting on ADD medication, LaRoche had a big second half on his way to a career year and 32 HR. But apparently LaRoche is off his meds again. So far this year he’s hitting .168 with three homers.

2. Chone Figgins

Figgins broke two fingers on his throwing hand in spring training. Since his return, Figgins is hitting .137 with three doubles and three runs batted in 14 games. He’s only had 51 at bats, but that’s still pretty disappointing.

3. Ryan Howard

He hit a game-winning pinch hit grand slam recently, so we’ll cut him a little slack. But he followed up his grand slam with a strike out. What do you think we’ll see more of in coming weeks, homers or Ks? For Philly’s sake, it better be the former.

4. Jeff Weaver

I don’t know how he pitched so well last October. It just doesn’t add up. Add Weaver to a long list of terrible Seattle free-agent signings, along with Beltre, Sexton, and Vidro. Just awful.

5. Ichiro Suzuki

He’ll turn it around. He’s freaking Ichiro in a contract year. Remember the crazy second half he had in 2005? I’m betting on a repeat performance this season.

6. Freddy Sanchez

No power. No speed. Last year was a fluke.

Did I miss anyone?