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Pittsburgh Pirates just made a couple of egregious ones. Frank Cervelli doubled. John Jaso doubled, and Frank Cervelli stopped at third, instead of scoring.
With one out, on the following play, Jordy Mercer flied out Cervelli came home. But John Jaso was "picked off" running to third, preventing the run from scoring.
Yet I didn't see these miscues scored as error. All the errors I see are defensive errors? Why is that, is that because offensive errors are so rare?
In baseball, only defensive errors are recorded. I think, in part, this is due to the nature of such errors. If the shortstop lets a ground ball go under his glove, for example, that is clear mistake for which he is at fault.
While plenty of offensive players make boneheaded baserunning mistakes, they are decidedly less common than fielding errors. Furthermore, oftentimes these mistakes are really the result of great plays by the fielders (such as the situation you describe above).
To get a runner who is tagging on a fly ball, the throw has to be in time, perfectly on line, and the tag must be applied before the runner arrives. In that situation, it is less a matter of the runner making a negative play than the fielders making positive ones.
These are not recorded mainly because it is hard to define what a base running error would involve. In your given situation, It could be argued that Cervelli "played it safe" by not trying to run home.
One stat you may be interested in however is TOOTBLAN, which stands for Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop. They account for boneheaded "offensive errors" you are referring to. It is not an official stat, but http://tootblan.tumblr.com/ does an outstanding job recording them.
