I didn’t disparage anyone.

RC is half-a$$ed. It doesn’t properly value things. And if BaseRuns existed, RC would never have been invented. OBP*SLG*whatever is a quick and dirty approach… half-a$$ed.

As for the fans, I don’t particularly care if BsR catches on more than RC or not. I’m happy to lay out the case for BsR for those interested in learning about the two. Obviously, the basic version of RC is easier, but it’s also easier because it’s not as good.

Half-a$$ed things are valuable… that doesn’t make it better. And that’s the argument. Do you want logic and illumination, or do you want something quick and dirty, that sacrifices logic and some illumination to get you something “good enough”.

To each his own…

Frankly, I suspect that BaseRuns will have trouble catching on with most fans because they will never be able to calculate it for themselves. That may be a flaw of the fans, rather than BaseRuns, but it is a reality. RCO (or RCA) combines three statistics that are already quite familiar into a single number that characterizes a hitter’s overall performance much more meaningfully than any of its components in isolation. I think that makes it very valuable, especially if it can be popularized (Joe?).

If the issue is one about logic and illumination, then that’s what BaseRuns provides and Runs Created does not. Kudos to Joe for taking the steps in the right direction.

Personally, I think that the best way to do this would be to attribute bases gained and lost to hitters and runners within each inning, add up the net results, and then divide the total by 4 to calculate runs. This is not as clever as any of the formulas that use traditional statistics for input, but it has the indisputable advantage of always being exactly right at the team and league level. The big problem for any kind of historical application is that you must have complete play-by-play data; a box score is unlikely to provide enough information.

With any of the well-known run estimators, including both Runs Created and BaseRuns, I think that ending up with more than 100 for an entire season is pretty good. Last year, there were 51 players who reached that mark (in “sophisticated” RC), and only 19 exceeded 120; A-Rod led the way at 166. However, his simple RCA (9.92) put him behind both David Ortiz (10.34) and Magglio Ordonez (10.13) because he made more outs than they did.

Thanks for the linkie Tangotiger!

There are some small issues with your implementation of BaseRuns (haven’t accounted for outs used, need to compare to a baseline like league-average or replacement level, etc.), but just the fact that you’re measuring player production in runs is awesome. This is linear weights, but without the scary name and explained in a fun way.

For people interested, you can find runs produced compared to the average player on a hitter’s Baseball-Reference page. It’s in the Special Batting section on the way right — BtRuns. It’s already park adjusted, too!

Joe, your next step is to find some of the good fielding stats measured in runs.

It’s a counting stat, and therefore, if you have a problem with it, you have a problem with walks, HR, and runs. You can convert it to a rate stat by dividing by outs made.

And the above site calculates the Base Runs by figuring the team with and without the player, and giving him the difference.

EQA goes to the trouble of Park factors, which is a plus in its favor. That doesn’t take anythign away from the basic version BaseRuns. There’s also an EqA version without park factors. The point is that given the same stats, BsR fits them together better than EqA does. Anyone who has studies *both* of these metrics doesn’t dispute it.

The problem with the other metrics being discussed in this thread is that we can show (and have shown) that the weights are not correct: they undervalue walks and overvalue HR. Basically, you need to get those right, among all the other items. BsR does get it right. Other than Linear Weights, all the other metrics do not get it right.

(*) By the way, I need kid jokes. My kid is telling me all his jokes, and then he says “your turn”. I’ve got nothing for him. His favorite joke, which he likes to say all the time, which I have to laugh at all the time is: Why was the mustard last in the race? Because it couldn’t… catch up (catsup… ketchup). Joe, please work your magic, and help us out.