For the Pirates, who are trying to get to the 87-win level, any improvement helps. Every
week Fox e-mails a baserunning report to Pirates third base coach Tony Beasley. "At first I was skeptical," says Beasley. "Now I think [Fox is] a genius. The numbers reveal things you don’t really see with your eyes.
You see that last year [first baseman] Adam LaRoche didn’t go from first to third a lot and didn’t take a lot of chances in general. Now he’s being more aggressive and is one of our best base runners. These numbers give the players something of substance to work for. Players want to hear the truth as long as you can back it up. And now we have numbers to back up everything."