Crawford steals more of the national spotlight

If being the MVP of last week's All-Star Game wasn't enough, Carl Crawford will receive more national attention once this week's issue of Sports Illustrated hits the newsstands.

CC is featured in a story on the lost art of stealing bases.

Here is an excerpt of the story written by Albert Chen ...

“Four years ago, in a series of essays for the Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times websites, Dan Fox introduced a metric called Equivalent Baserunning Runs (EqBRR), which today is, by far, the most advanced baserunning statistic available. EqBRR combines the contributions of all forms of baserunning: stolen bases; advancement on ground outs, fly balls and hits; as well as advancement on passed balls, wild pitches and balks. Fox examined play-by-play data going back to 1956, the earliest year such information was available, and as expected, those who made the greatest impact on the bases were speedsters such as [Rickey] Henderson and [Tim] Raines, who, according to their EqBRRs, contributed an average of more than 10 runs a season at the peak of their careers with their baserunning alone. Hall of Famer Robin Yount was one of the best at taking the extra base on hits, adding nearly eight runs in his best seasons with his baserunning even though he never stole more than 22 bases in a season. The best base runner of all time, however, was [Willie] Wilson, who in his best season (1980) added more than 19 runs with his legs, according to Fox's formula.”