A few years back, I invented a statistic in response to a reader's (no offense) insane belief that Juan Pierre was, in all ways, a better outfielder than Alfonso Soriano.  This reader particularly felt that Pierre was a fantastic leadoff hitter because he led the league in hits and stole so many bases - ignoring Pierre's ridiculously low OBP and his inability to draw walks.

Basically, in an ideal world, your leadoff hitter should get on base probably 40% of the time.  Realistically, most teams would be happy with somebody who can get on at a .350 to .360 clip.  Pierre certainly never fit that category, and this year the Cubs have a guy batting in the #2 hole who doesn't belong there, and I'm going to use EOBP to prove that he's doing more harm than good.

EOBP, as the title suggests, stands for Essential On Base Percentage.  Basically, you add up a person's hits and walks, as you would with OBP, but rather than divide that number by at bats, you subtract times picked off or caught stealing before dividing.  The reason you do this is because, regardless of whether or not a guy gets on first base, he's not helping the team if he makes a lot of outs trying to steal second.  So, let's take a quick look at Ryan Theriot.  Presently, Theriot's got some very respectable numbers -  in 35 games and 138 at bats, Theriot has 45 hits and 17 walks.  He's also stolen 8 bases in 15 tries, which is just unacceptable.  

By traditional thinking, Theriot has an OBP of .404.  But his EOBP is .348, more than 50 points lower.  In other words, he's helping nobody by trying to steal bases.  He's getting caught much, much too often, and if he's going to continue to get caught stealing bases while batting in front of guys like Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez, then he doesn't belong there.  Again, as we've been saying all along, a more suitable option is Kosuke Fukudome.

So, you now have a better idea about what EOBP is.  It is perhaps the only baseball statistic I've invented, not that it has caught on in the two-or-so years that it's existed.  But spread the word.  If you know somebody who's a stat head, or who thinks stats are even relatively interesting, tell him about EOBP and where you learned about it.