From Last Night:

• Freddy Garcia dominates the Nats
• Dillon Gee’s 12 K lead the Mets to a four game sweep of the Yankees
• Kazmir goes 7 strong behind a 7 run inning to beat the Reds
• Felix dominates the Padres as Ryan, Chavez, Franklin, and Morales all homer
• Travis Wood hits a grand slam and gets the win over the White Sox
• Wacha goes 7, gives up 2 hits in his MLB debut and gets a ND

What I’m Watching Today:

• Lester and CC faces off in NY (7p Eastern)
• Moore and Kluber go head to head in Cleveland (7p Eastern)
• Jacob Turner makes his 2013 debut (7p Eastern)
• Strasburg faces the Braves (7p Eastern)
• Cain and Miller in St. Louis (8p Eastern)
• Kershaw at Coors (830p Eastern)

The Big Question:

• Are the Cardinals wizards?

Yesterday, I wrote about teams who do a good job scoring from 2B on a single and today I’m going to look at a nearly opposite concept. Which teams make the most outs on the bases? Specifically, which teams make the most outs at 3B and home on the bases? I isolate those two categories because I think it makes for a good third base coach ranking. Third base coaches signal if a runner should advance to third or home on a play, but runners usually make the choice about second. So here, without much more ado, are the teams that have made the most outs on the bases at 3B and home entering Thursday (listed by raw number, but also shown with percentage of their total outs on the bases):

I haven’t spent enough time with these numbers to really know if it reflects the quality of the team’s third base coach, but I suspect it does. The coach can’t make his runners faster, but he can know which players are capable of taking the extra base and only telling them to advance. They don’t always listen, but a good third base coach should be able to make them. Seattle makes the highest percentage of their baserunning outs at 3B and home, so their coach could probably do more to help. Ideally, you would want to have all zeroes on this board, but the columns showing 3B and home are categories in which the coach plays a role and should therefore be judged. I’ll be thinking about this more and working on a way to further isolate this going forward. If you have suggestions, let me know.