As I tuned in during the middle of the Pirates/Giants game a couple Sundays ago, the Giants seemed poised for a big inning that could put the Pirates away. With the game tied 1-1 in the bottom of the third, the Giants had loaded the bases with only one out and their five and six hitters coming up. However, when Reggie Sanders delivered with a sharp single to left scoring Rich Aurilia from third, Jeff Kent was sent home from second and was gunned down at the plate.

Ouch.

The next Giants hitter, Damon Minor, made a bid to rejuvenate the rally with a single to right, but as a hobbled Barry Bonds rounded third and limped toward home, he was also thrown out.

Double ouch.

Even though the Giants eventually managed to pull the game out in extra innings, those two plays at the plate cost them plenty at the time. But nothing in the next day's box score or in any stats sheet reflects that cost. Outs on the basepaths are one of the big unmeasured aspects of baseball. We all know that outs like those San Francisco made against Pittsburgh can turn wins into losses, but we don't know who is making the most of those outs, or whether there's a big difference between the best teams and the worst.

Giants third-base coach Sonny Jackson has been lambasted by Bay Area fans and media alike this season for the team's baserunning blunders between second and home. But do the Giants really make more of those blunders than other teams, or is Jackson's reputation the result of a handful of highlight-reel plays coupled with selective memory?

Let's look at the teams that have made the most and fewest outs on the bases this year (totals through August 17). We're going to limit ourselves to outs where the runner was caught trying to stretch an extra base out of a play. That is, we won't concern ourselves here with forceouts, non-force fielder's choices, caught stealings, pickoffs, or runners getting doubled off on flies.

Here are the top and bottom teams at having runners caught stretching on the basepaths, along with the breakdown of the bases where they made their outs. (The few examples of runners "out stretching" at first represent runners trying to make it back to first after initially heading to second.)

Rank Team          First Second  Third   Home    Total Outs
1    Milwaukee       0      7      8      17        32
2    Chicago WS      2      7      8      12        29
3    Florida         0      6     10      12        28
T4   Cincinnati      2      8      6      10        26
T4   Minnesota       0      7      9      10        26


T25  Oakland         0      4      5       6        15
T25  Tampa Bay       0      6      3       6        15
T25  Chicago Cubs    0      3      8       4        15
28   St. Louis       0      5      2       6        13
29   Toronto         1      2      4       5        12
30   Pittsburgh      1      2      3       5        11

I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find the Brewers leading the majors in making outs on the bases. They're bad at hitting, pitching, and fielding, so why not add baserunning to the list? The Brewers' 17 outs at home is also easily tops in the majors, far ahead of the second-place Red Sox and Astros with 13 each.

The Giants are right in the middle of the league, tied with Detroit and Los Angeles for 14th with 20 outs. However, the Giants are tied for fourth in the majors in outs at home plate with 12, so Sonny Jackson isn't out of the woods yet.

One problem with looking at raw numbers of outs is that it doesn't give a sense of the cost of those outs. We can get an idea of what these outs are costing teams by bringing out the expected runs table. This table tells us, for each of the 24 possible bases/outs situations, the average number of runs that score from that situation. Here are the numbers for this year through July:

Bases            Outs
             0     1     2        
empty      0.51  0.27  0.10
1st        0.90  0.53  0.23
2nd        1.13  0.67  0.32
1st, 2nd   1.51  0.96  0.43
3rd        1.41  0.93  0.35
1st, 3rd   1.79  1.13  0.52
2nd, 3rd   1.97  1.41  0.60
loaded     2.35  1.51  0.79

Using this table, we can approximate the cost of a given out on the bases by comparing the situation after the out to the situation where the runner didn't try for the extra base. For example, take Kent's ill-fated dash to the plate described above. If Jackson had held Kent at third, the Giants would have had bases loaded with one out, good for 1.51 runs on average. After Kent was gunned down, the Giants had runners at first and second with two outs, worth 0.43 runs on average. So the unsuccessful attempt to score cost the Giants more than a run in that situation. A similar analysis shows that Bonds' attempt was less costly -- 0.79 runs on average -- confirming the intuition that it makes more sense to make a risky run for the plate with two outs than with zero or one.

Doing this kind of analysis for each baserunning out allows us to figure out how many runs teams are costing themselves. Here are the top and bottom five:

Rank Team         Runs Cost
1    Milwaukee      20.3
2    Arizona        19.3
3    Chicago WS     19.2
4    Florida        17.3
5    Baltimore      16.5


26   Tampa Bay       9.0
27   Texas           8.8
28   St. Louis       8.3
29   Toronto         7.8
30   Pittsburgh      7.3

There's a fair amount of overlap between the raw number of outs shown above and the cost of those outs shown here, but the relationship isn't perfect. The Diamondbacks have had a lot of especially costly outs -- runners gunned down at the plate with less than two outs -- so they move up the list. The Rangers have made most of their baserunning outs in less damaging situations, so they move down the list.

And what about individual baserunners? Here are the players whose baserunning outs have cost the most runs so far this year:

Runner          Outs   Runs Cost
Frank Thomas     5        5.0
Todd Helton      7        4.5
Roger Cedeno     6        3.6
Craig Counsell   4        3.5
Travis Lee       5        3.3
Eric Young       4        3.3
Edgar Renteria   3        3.3
Kenny Lofton     4        3.2
Cliff Floyd      5        3.2
Julio Lugo       5        3.1

You almost have to feel sorry for Frank Thomas. It's not enough that his batting production is a pale imitation of his mid-'90s glory days. He's cost the White Sox an extra handful of runs with questionable baserunning to boot. He's been thrown out at the plate four times this year, each time with less than two outs.

There's obviously a limit to how much you can conclude from this sort of analysis. There are lots of variables here -- opportunity, difficulty, etc. -- that are difficult or impossible to control for. The most glaring limitation is that we're looking at the cost of risky baserunning while ignoring the potential benefit. It's possible, for example, that the Brewers are scoring lots of extra runs using the same aggressive baserunning tactics that have resulted in all those outs. Unlikely, but possible. There's a reason that non-stolen-base baserunning has gone largely unmeasured throughout baseball history: it's tough to measure it right.

That said, let's get back to the Giants and Sonny Jackson. While the Giants don't look too bad on either of the lists above, they look worse if you isolate the plays where the third-base coach plays the largest role: outs at the plate. The Giants have been the third-most damaged team by their outs at the plate, behind only the Brewers and the White Sox. They've had six runners thrown out at the plate with less than two outs, more than anyone except the Brewers, White Sox and Diamondbacks.

So the numbers confirm that the Giants are making more than their share of outs at the plate, and that those outs are especially costly. And it's reasonable to give Jackson some of the blame for that. But even if you want to blame it all on Jackson, it's just not that big of a deal. Outs at the plate have cost the Giants about 10 runs, or about three more than an average team. Those three runs aren't likely to make the difference in their wild-card race with the Dodgers. If they're going to be spending organizational resources improving the team, fixing holes in the lineup is a higher priority than breaking in a new third-base coach.

You can check out more work from the team of writers of the Baseball Prospectus at baseballprospectus.com. Michael Wolverton can be reached at mjw@baseballprospectus.com. Baseball Prospectus is a registered trademark of Prospectus Entertainment Ventures, LLC.