Recording errors is pretty silly, IMO. On a pop-up that manages to land in the middle of an infield committe of players, none of whom even touch the ball, no error is recorded. Meanwhile, if an infielder makes a great diving stop, but his throw draws the first baseman off the bag, he may very well be credited with an error.
My take on why they aren’t recorded is, no one cares enough about them to keep track. Especially since, because they are fairly rare (as has been pointed out), most everyone will have some very low number of them. So it won’t be that meaningful to someone who is looking at a stat sheet and trying to get an idea of how good a player is. There just wouldn’t be enough variance, among players, I’m guessing.
In the very rare cases where someone is an exceptionally bad runner, people will just have a mental note that “that guy is one lousy baserunner.”
Also touched on, recording fielding errors also figures directly into a pitcher’s ERA, so right there is a good reason to keep track of those.
In order to record baserunning errors there must be something in the scoring section of the official rules defining what consitutes such an error. The rules defining defensive errors are fairly extensive and include all sorts of exceptions. For example, it is not an error if a double play isn’t completed due to a bad throw, but it is an error if a double play isn’t completed because of a bad catch. Also, it isn’t an error if a catcher makes a bad throw in trying to throw out a base stealer, unless the bad throw results in a runner advancing apart from the stolen base.
It wouldn’t do to make it a subjective decision by the official scorer. Without definitions and standards you’d have no consistency. For example, would it be an error to be thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double? Some scorers might say yes, and others might say no. Without standards the statistical category is useless.
By the way, the official rules say that only physical errors may be counted as defensive errors. Mental errors such as throwing to the wrong base or holding the ball too long after making a catch are not counted as errors in the official scorer’s report. If the same were to done for baserunning errors Suppan’s blunder wouldn’t be counted. If you want to count mental blunders, good luck writing the official rules to include them.
In my opinion even defensive errors are not very useful for statistical analysis. One problem is that a fielder can only make an error on a ball he can reach. What’s the difference, for example, between a play where a shortstop is positioned well on a grounder but has the ball tip off his glove and one where the shortstop is positioned poorly and a grounder goes into the outfield untouched? The first shortstop can be charged with an error on the play, while the second shortstop cannot.
Another problem with defensive errors is that several different outcomes are lumped together into one category. An error can result in a baserunner being safe, one or more baserunners advancing or an at-bat being prolonged (for example, if a fielder drops a foul pop-up). The number of errors doesn’t really tell anyone what happened on the field in the same way that the numbers of hits, walks, strikeouts, etc. do.
Interesting discussion
Thanks guys