Why do we use steals?

[Teenwolf]

My main league has used SB-CS for years, and I like it. For a couple of years we used SB-2*CS (which is the more sabrmetric way because it mimics RC, if I recall correctly), but that was brutal for all but a few players.

But why not penalize players for CS? Why should a player who gets caught half the time enjoy the stat boost? And, yes, I recognize the wonkiness of the stat sometimes - but why single it out instead of Sv or Ho or the unfairness of R or RBI (when somebody got on because of an E, e.g.), or others?

I've posted a few times here that Branch Rickey wrote an article in 1954 (in Life Magazine no less, titled "Goodby to Some Old Baseball Ideas" - see, e.g., https://invention.si.edu/branch-rick...ball-innovator) that said that the two most important statistics were OBA and EBA (what he called "Extra Base Power"). Why not use a single stat combining those two (essentially OPS) for offensive players and forget SB, RBI, and R? It might mimic the reality of offensive productivity more properly, but it's not particularly conducive to a game like rotisserie baseball (IMHO).

My biggest issue is that a botched hit and run or a pickoff that's so good the runner gets frozen and into a rundown, these things are not the same as a straight CS, but they're counted the same in roto. I don't believe titles should be won or lost based on a decision made by the coach and not the player. I'd rather judge players based on their own merits than have to start considering managerial tendencies and stuff like that. That would make roto play very un-fun for me.

I prefer "is a player fast enough to steal bases?" and then "is the poor SB success rate this guy is having going to lead to him getting the red light at some point?" So CS are already built into the equation of SB enough as it is, in my mind.

I watch the live boxscores and there's a few things that make me mad, like RP blowing my SP's win. But nothing felt worse than collecting -2 SB on a day because of pickoffs and botched double steals from guys who never straight steal. I think in general, punitive stats make the game less fun amd might make sense in points based leagues, but harder to translate to roto. Can you imagine if pitchers got negative wins when they left with a lead but the bullpen blew it? Or hitters negative HR if they hit it less than 400 ft? It just feels unfair to me, but maybe I'm a whiner. (Setting myself up here, but oh well...)

[Erik]

My league has had SB-CS from the beginning. It doesn’t really change things all that much from SB. The top guys in SB are still the top guys in SB-CS and are priced accordingly for it. And it does create outliers that make for fun stories, like the year Jose Offerman was -8.