An underrated area of strength

Anyone who followed the Nationals closely last season remembers that pretty much from Day One of spring training, manager Matt Williams said he was going to make sure that his team played an aggressive brand of ball, putting pressure on opponents with their baserunning style.

That is indeed how things played out for the 2014 Nats.

I came across a tweet yesterday from John Dewan, who is the author of the Fielding Bible. Dewan passed along a link that ranked the best baserunning teams in 2014, according to a Bill James-created stat called "net gain." And the Nationals sat at the top of the list.

Net gain measures baserunning by including advancements on hits and outs in addition to stolen bases (meaning that any time you take the extra base safely, you're rewarded), while being thrown out on the bases leads to deductions. And according to those measures, the Nats were the best baserunning team in the majors last season, with the Twins just behind them.

As noted in that link above, the Nationals ranked just 12th in the majors in stolen bases last season, and you don't really think about them having great team speed overall. But the Nats excelled at pushing the envelope at the right time, and taking the extra base.

The Nats had a baserunner take an extra base (taking two bases on a single, or three on a double) 43 percent of the time last season. That ranked second in the National League and seventh in the majors.

They only stole 101 bases as a team, but were successful in their stolen base attempts a whopping 81.5 percent of the time, best in the majors.

And according to FanGraphs' baserunning metric, UBR, the Nats put up 7.0 runs above average on the basepaths, fifth-best in the majors.

The Nats talked last season about how being aggressive on the bases was in their team DNA, and was a way that they felt that they could gain an edge over opponents. According to some measures, at least, the Nats were a better baserunning team than any other in 2014.