Coachric,
Great points. One of the things I haven’t seen mentioned is, as the level of play gets higher, there’s a smaller percentage of players who will even try to steal a base. That’s the reason why SBPcts are generally very high. Our coach is aggressive on the bases and will send almost anyone, and has been doing that rather successfully for over 20 years.
One of the things he works on with runners constantly is getting the biggest lead possible. The point isn’t necessarily to get stolen bases, but rather to disrupt the pitcher because the more he’s focused on the runners, the less he’s focused on the hitters, and that’s the guy who can do the real damage.
That’s why I started tracking runner disruptions a few years back, and producing the following metric. http://www.infosports.com/scor.../images/disrupt1.pdf I wasn’t prepared for how rapidly it became a “must have” metric for the coaching staff and the parents.