Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs
Posted: November 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 107 Comments »
If you are about my age*, then you grew up as a baseball fan with three statistics and only three statistics. There was batting average. There were home runs runs. And there were RBIs. That was it.
*You might also groan when you get out of a chair and get just a little bit too excited when you come across some nostalgic thing you had forgotten all about like Lite Brite or the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast or Wacky Packies. And right about now you are humming the Superfriends Theme.
It would be difficult to overstate how deeply those three statistics were burned into our baseball fan psyche. Every single time we would watch a game on television, we would see those three same stats, always the same three stats, listed below the batter, usually in large blocky letters so that it looked like so:
Graig Nettles
.267 avg.
21 home runs
91 RBI
Often, they would put the numbers across the screen, horizontally — but no matter the design, it was still the same three numbers. But it wasn’t just on television. The newspapers would only list those numbers. And every time you would hear a game on the radio, the announcer in (I suspect) every single town would give the players name followed by the those three numbers: “That will bring up Sixto Lezcano, Sixto’s hitting .273 on the year, 21 homers, 49 runs batted in.â€
Same numbers in the same order every time.
Baseball cards would have a couple more numbers on the back, but not many more. In the early-to-mid 1970s when I started collecting cards, the only numbers they had on the back other than the core three: at-bats, hits, doubles and triples. It wasn’t until 1977 1976* that Topps even put RUNS on the back on cards. In 1978, they added games. In 1981, around that time when the Donruss and Fleer cards started to offer some competition, Topps added stolen bases, slugging percentage (what was this slugging voodoo?) walks and strikeouts. And that’s how it stayed until my Cleveland Indians card collection runs out in 1987.
*More on this in a new baseball card post.
My point is we were INUNDATED with batting average, homers and RBIs. We were INOCULATED with batting average, homers and RBIs. We were BRAINWASHED with batting average, homers and RBIs — those are, for kids of my generation, like the queen of diamonds in “The Manchurian Candidate.†If someone called me up right now and said, “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire,†and I looked at my baseball cards, and came across batting average, homers and RBIs, yeah, I’d probably be programmed to kill.
I think it’s good, every so often, to consider how deeply batting average, homers and RBIs are cut into our baseball DNA. Those were more or less the only numbers we were even ALLOWED to consider. Why do you think Bill James was such a seminal figure — it’s because he so clearly and concisely and hilariously was able to slap our faces and show us that, yeah, there was more out there, a bigger world. He was like the baseball version of Morpheus for us. Red pill or blue pill. Blue pill you can stick with your core statistics and believe that Steve Garvey had a good season in 1984 and Andre Dawson deserved his ‘87 MVP. Red pill and you can see beyond: .279, 14, 74.
The funny part is that even after you appreciate that there is a bigger baseball world, it’s very hard to completely break away from what you grew up with. Sure, I KNOW that on-base percentage is a more compelling statistic than batting average, and yet I find myself looking at batting average first. I KNOW that home runs, while significant, do not give as complete a picture of a batter’s power as slugging percentage does … but I am built to look at the home run number and make judgments. I KNOW that RBIs give an utterly incomplete picture of a baseball player’s hitting talent, but I cannot help but feel a bit of admiration when I see that someone knocked in 97 ribbies.*
*That would be Jose Guillen. I KNOW that Jose Guillen was one of the worst everyday players in the American League last year. I know this. He’s an awful fielder. He can’t and often doesn’t run. He had a .300 on-base percentage, which is abominable (third-worst among corner outfielders). He had a .438 slugging percentage which is barely one step above abominable for a guy who was signed for $12 million per so he could hit with power. He was a total pain in the Hillman. And while he had a smoking hot 44-game stretch in the middle of the year (.380/.391/.659 with 10 home runs … and, yeah, two walks), the other 109 games he was, no exaggeration, the worst player in baseball. He hit .215/.263/.344 as a lousy fielding corner outfielder with an attitude … you simply can’t pay enough for that kind of dreadfulness.
BUT … I can’t help it. I see those 97 RBIs and, against my will, I find myself reverting to childhood and involuntarily thinking, “Hey, that’s a lot of ribbies.†A person my age cannot help this, it’s impulse and reflex . It’s like if you go up to anybody my age, anyone, and start that Muppet Show song — you know “Me-nah-me-nah†— they will, without wanting to, respond with “Doo-doooo-doo-do-do.†It’s in our genes.
So what’s wrong with a baseball world filled only with batting average, homers and RBIs? OK, well, I think everyone here can appreciate why on-base percentage is so much more telling than batting average. I’ve written at length on this, like everyone else has, but to put it simply: Batting average — for reasons that go back more than 100 years — does not incorporate walks. On-base percentage DOES incorporate walks. There’s your difference. Walks are very good things for a hitter. Very good things. Important things. Significant things. Very significant things.
In my view, walks, even now, even after Moneyball, are wildly underrated. One of the many cool things Bill James has shown — and others have shown it in different ways as well — is that if a player could walk EVERY AT BAT, he would be the most productive player in baseball history. And that would be true no matter HOW brutal the players around him might be. Someone who walked every time — and I remember reading a kids book about the possibility, “The Boy Who Always Walked” or something — would be more productive than Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth or Ted Williams in their greatest seasons. Bill and others proved this in really cool and dramatic ways — I believe Bill even set up some computer simulation to prove the point. I don’t know how to to do computer simulations, but I should be able to give demonstrate this in a few short sentences:
OK, so, the all-time record for total bases in a season is Babe Ruth with 457 in 1921. That’s a massive season. If you tack on his 145 walks and the four times he was hit by a pitch (Four hit-by-pitch? That’s all? Hey does someone want to move the Babe off the plate or something?), you get 606 grand total bases, which is the most in baseball history.
If they had walked the Babe every single time, he would have had 693 grand total bases, which would be, you know, more.
Barry Bonds in 2004 — the year he had that sick .609 on-base percentage — had 303 total bases along with 232 walks (amazing) and 9 hit-by pitch. That’s a grand total of 544 total bases.
If they had walked Bonds every single time that season — and Lord knows they tried — he would have had 617 grand total-bases.
Ted Williams in 1941 hit .406 with 37 homers, 147 walks, a .735 slugging percentage. His grand total bases — total bases plus walks plus hit-by pitch — was 485.
If they had walked the Splinter every time, he would have had 606 grand total bases.
So it’s pretty simple. Walks are a critical part of the game. The best on-base guys reach base about 270-300 times per season and more than a third of those are on walks. Batting average does not consider walks. So there you go: It’s pretty clear to see that batting average is a very flawed statistic — it’s a bit like calculating a quarterback passer rating for every pass he makes EXCEPT when he throws to the running backs or the tight end.*
*Well, you know how much I love creating new statistics … what about “Grand Total Bases?†That would be total bases plus walks plus hit-by-pitch:
2008 leaders in GTB
1. Albert Pujols, 451
2. David Wright, 432
3. MannyBManny, 430
4. Grady Sizemore, 427
5. Mark Teixeira, 421
6. Lance Berkman, 420
7. Hanley Ramirez, 418
8. Chase Utley, 416
9. Ryan Howard, 415
10. Josh Hamilton, 402
11. Carlos Beltran, 396
And in 2007:
1. A-Rod, 492
2. Matt Holliday, 459
3. Prince Fielder, 458
4. David Ortiz, 456
5. Jimmy Rollins, 436
6. Oh-wee-oh Magglio, 432
7. David Wright, 430
8. Albert Pujols, 427
9. Ryan Howard, 421
10. Carlos Pena, 420
And over the last 25 years:
1. Barry Bonds, 2001, 597
2. Mark McGwire, 1998, 551
3. Sammy Sosa, 2001, 547
4. Barry Bonds, 2004, 544
5. Luis Gonzalez, 2001, 533
6. Carlos Delgado, 2000, 516
7. Todd Helton, 2000, 512
8. Todd Helton, 2001, 505
9. Larry Walker, 1997, 501
10. Ryan Howard, 2006, 500
Anyway, I think it’s interesting.
OK, the second part of the equation — home runs are obviously very important. But I think that our obsession with counting home runs has probably skewed our view of the good power hitter. Tony Muser and others have made the semi-comical, semi-interesting assertion that doubles are sometimes better than home runs because they keep rallies going and keep the pressure on pitchers, and while I I would not go there I would say that doubles are another underrated part of baseball.
Ryan Howard hit 48 homers last year, which led the league, and so you would think he was the most powerful hitter around. But he only hit 26 doubles and his .543 slugging percentage placed him SEVENTH in the National League. so he was, in fact, NOT the most powerful hitter. He was the best home run hitter. But that’s not the same thing.
Then there are RBIs. Whew. RBIs. It is interesting to me that, for about as long as baseball has been played, people have viewed RBIs as more important than runs scored. It really seems to me it should be at tie, or, if anything, it should be the other way around. After all, to SCORE a run you have to:
1. Get on base.
2. Work your way around the bases.
3. Score the run.
There are no other ways to score a run. You have to do those three things. Of course there are cheap and easy ways to get on base (by error, fielder’s choice, catcher’s interference, etc.). There are cheap and easy ways to get around the bases (wild pitch, balk, error, etc.) and there are cheap and easy ways to score runs (trotting around on someone else’s home run, scoring on passed ball, etc.). But you still have to accomplish those three feats, and the likelihood of scoring a run without doing something good is pretty low. More often than not it takes multiple skills to score a run.
Meanwhile, knocking in a run requires only one act: Hitting a baseball in such a way that a runner scores. That’s all. Sometimes this means driving yourself in by hitting a home run. Sometimes this means getting a huge clutch hit with runners in scoring position and two outs. Often enough, it means hitting a fly ball with a runner on third base — the only time a fly ball is worth anything. Often enough it means hitting a routine ground ball with the infield back — the only time a routine ground ball is worth anything. Often enough it means getting a hit against a mop-up pitcher with the game out of reach.
The point is — what takes more overall skill? I think you could argue pretty persuasively that — and we’re talking generally here — scoring the run takes more skill. And yet the RBI has been the statistic of choice for a long time. The RBI, obviously, has a better press agent.
There are so many problems with judging a player by RBIs. Do you know who the best, the absolute best, RBI man in baseball was last year — assuming that by “RBI man†we are talking about the player who most efficiently drove in runners on base? I suppose many of you do know because the blog is based in Kansas City, but for the rest of you it will probably come as a bit of a shock: The answer is David DeJesus. Last season, DeJesus drove in 21.5% of the runners that were on base when he came to the plate. That was a better percentage than Josh Hamilton, better percentage than Ryan Howard, better than Kevin Youkilis, better than anyone.
Of course, you will point out, that DeJesus only had 73 RBIs, less than half of Ryan Howard’s total. Where are all those extra RBIs coming from? They are easy to locate:
– Ryan Howard hit 48 home runs to DeJesus’ 12. So that’s 36 more RBIs right off the top.
– DeJesus was usually the leadoff hitter for a Royals team that mostly had Tony Pena, Joey Gathright, John Buck, Ross Gload hitting in front of him. The Royals bottom three in the order hit:
7th: .245/.288/.364
8th: .252/.310/.357
9th: .233/.281/.285
So who in the heck did DeJesus have to drive in? Nobody, that’s the answer. David DeJesus only had 284 runners on base when he came to the plate. Ryan Howard had 199 more baserunners — 483.
That’s a huge difference. Put it this way: If David DeJesus has performed exactly the way he did only with Ryan Howard’s men-on-base, he would have had 114 RBIs last year. And that’s assuming he still only hit 12 home runs. If you want to be kind and give him another eight home runs — not unreasonably considering he would have gotten out of cavernous Kauffman Stadium — then he might have had 125 RBIs or 130 RBIs. And suddenly, people would be saying David DeJesus — doing not much more than he did this year — was the league MVP.
RBIs are just so much about circumstance. I’ll give you another great Ryan Howard statistic — and I don’t mean to keep picking on Howard, but he’s just in the middle of all this because he led the league in homers and RBIs.
So, we know Ryan Howard drove in 146 RBIs. Do you know what Howard hit in those situations called late and close — that would be seventh inning or later with the score close (tied, within one run, tying run on base, at plate or on deck)? Now, remember, this is the guy who LED THE LEAGUE in RBIs. So you could take away from that that he must have hit well in the clutch, he must have knocked in runs when the team needed them, he must have performed at his best when the game was on the line.
Ryan Howard came up late-and-close 124 times. He hit … .158 in those situations. He on-based .306. He slugged .337.
That is not Tony Pena. But it’s the nicer house in his neighborhood.*
*Or to put it in Monopoly terms — it’s like a hotel on Baltic.
Does this mean Ryan Howard cannot hit in the clutch? Absolutely not. In 2006, when Howard had a massive year, he hit .290/.436/.613 in late and close. No, it just means that those RBI totals, while they are nice to look at, don’t tell you very much.
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You’re mostly preaching to the choir here, Joe, but it is presented in a very nice way here. I would love to point some of my friends in the direction of this column.
Shouldn’t GTB include stolen bases less caught stealing as well?
It’s good to keep preaching to the choir because you never know when a new soul will wander into the church. Wasn’t someone asking just the other day why RBI were overrated in the comments? This is a good piece to email to that one friend/family member/co-worker of yours.
Why doesn’t total bases already include walks and HBP? I guess I always thought it did..
Walks are undervalued. But if you use the example that you gave, only subbed hits in for walks. Then if a player reached base on a hit every single time up, then they would be even MORE valuable than the batter who walked. And of course, the hit has the ability to be more than just a single…
Great entry. Very well presented. I need to forward this along to the unconvinced baseball masses, like my dad.
Voters have a right to their opinions of course. The one that ges me is why anyone thinks Morneau is more valuable than Mauer year after year.
It’s not just guys Joe’s age who were reared on Avg./HR/RBI. It’s EVERY baseball fan born before 1990 or so. OBP really did not become a mainstream statistic until about the past five years- basically after “Moneyball.” And even now, as we’re always reminded, it’s underrated in comparison to average, though I do think that will change someday.
I was born in 1984, and I don’t ever remember anyone talking about OBP or SLG as a kid. Sure, you saw it in the paper sometimes, or on the back of a baseball card, but you were like “what the hell is that? Show me the triple crown stats.” I mean, I know there were people who by then had proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the superiority of such stats, but that knowledge was nowhere near the mainstream until the early part of this decade. They didn’t start putting OBP in the stat line in broadcasts until around 2004, and some networks still don’t do it.
“Moneyball” really is what changed it. I’ve always been a pretty well-informed fan, but I was only scarcely aware of OBP and SLG – let alone more advanced stuff – until I read it in college. I will say, though, that it all made so much sense – it really was like an “aha!” moment – that after that I pretty much came to ignore RBIs. I don’t even think “huh, that’s a lot” at a guy like Jose Guillen. Of course, “Moneyball” wasn’t really about on-base percentage or sabermetrics, but still: it was the first exposure a lot of thinking fans had to those arguments. I used to love “small ball,” but I read that, and I read some other stuff, and I began realize that if you think about baseball logically, it rarely makes any sense.
On a totally different note, where is Ghostbusters in the poll? I wouldn’t mind seeing Ducktales or Doug, either, but no Ghostbusters! Come on!
Is Graig supposed to be Greg or Craig?
Liked him as a player but his name always drove me nuts…
And while we’re on that is Anfernee supposed to be Anthony?
Or is Graig Graig and Anfernee Anfernee?
Me-nah-me-nah…
I believe the kids’ book was “The Kid Who Batted 1.000″ I might still have it in a box somewhere. The kid grew up on a farm and had frequent rock fights with his sister. His only means of self-defense was to pick up a stick and “foul off” the rocks. He honed his skills to the point that he was “discovered” by a big league team and was able to foul off pitches until he drew a walk. Every single time. In the “big game” at the end, he hit a home run or a single or something. Ring any bells, Joe? Or anyone else?
I grew up on the “big three” stats also and have a hard time breaking away. I think it’s because with the big three, I have a built in sense of what “average” “good” and “great” are. If someone hits .300 or hits 25 homers, that is pretty good in my mind. Even though OBP and Slugging Pct. are much more useful, I have no idea what “good” is with these numbers.
JJ – I remember reading somewhere (I think it might’ve been BPro’s “Baseball Between the Numbers”) that, historically, about as many players will get a .375 OBP as a .300 AVG in a given season. League average is usually around .330-.340. “Mendoza Line” is around .300. So you can kind of take it from there…
SLG is harder – I think league average is somewhere in the low-to-mid .400s, but I’m not sure.
i don’t remember the kids’ book, but does anyone remember “the year i owned the yankees” by sparky lyle? i remember being in tears laughing. at one point lyle hires a computer geek woman to advise the team; based on her advice the manager — i forget who that was now — directs the team to not swing ever. at first, pitchers strike out the side every inning. but then they get frustrated, and soon everyone is walking every at bat and the yankees can’t be beat.
at least i think that happened. anyway, it really was a funny book — even if it’s about the yankees.
JJ – I’m remembering the Kid Who Only Hit Home Runs off the top of my head, but your title sounds right, too. Probably different books right?
VIN – Spot on. I was also born in ‘84, and I grew up on the Big Three stats as well, though I can claim thinking early on in my baseball following days (maybe around 9), thinking that it seemed weird to give a guy credit for RBI’s, since the only way you could get an RBI is if someone else got on base before you…it was out the batter’s hands, so to speak, so why give him credit for that? As you said, I didn’t start to even really pay attention to to things like OBP, SLG, and more recently OPS+ until the last couple of years…actually, probably started in 2003 for me, when the Royals made baseball somewhat relevant for me again.
I read “The Kid Who Batted 1.000″ years ago, and the story is pretty much as described above.
Walks do continue to be underrated and even Joe, as enlightened as he is, doesn’t put his finger on why. The biggest reason why someone who walked every time up would be so productive is that they would make no outs, giving everyone on the team more opportunities to create runs. A team starts the year with 4374 outs. It moves a little (no bottom of 9th, extra innings, rain shortened games. But basically, 4300-or so outs. Howard in 2008 made, just based on baseball-reference.com* info, 469 outs (including 11 GIDP and 1 CS), Pujols made 356. Howard was responsible for about 10.7% of the team’s outs, Albert only about 8.2%. How can one possibly think that doesn’t matter? More than 4 extra full games of outs. But we’ve never gotten in the habit of counting the outs, despite the fact that they are, as Bill James once said, and offense’s most precious possession.
*Baseball-reference.com is one of the greatest inventions in the world, by the way.
Two absolute OUTRAGES:
1) The Muppet Show made it to the column but not the poll?
2) As of 1am on Friday, 200 people did NOT vote for Sesame Street!? They better have all been born before 1965!!
It’s weird. I’m an old Bill James fan; I have all the Abstracts and everything, and I’m a card-carrying member of the OBP choir. But I’m become convinced recently that batting average has become underrated, that the pendulum has swung the other way. Batting average does have value. It’s a measure of how often the batter makes solid contact when he swings the bat. Singles are more valuable than walks. Consistent .300 hitters are valuable. They’re just a lot more valuable when they also draw 80-plus walks per year.
. . . I’ve become convinced recently . . .
This blog needs an edit function.
One thing in defense of RBIs over runs scored. It’s not the start, it’s the finish. It’s kind of like the QB who throws for a lot of yards but few TDs.
Think about it this way, yes the runner has to do 3 things, in order, but the final 2 are more dependent upon what OTHERS do. Not to say they can’t shape those events, they clearly can, but if getting on was the easy part, no one would track runners LOB.
The RBI, on the other hand, is kind of like the red zone stats in football. When you’re in position to score, how many times do you seal the deal. Maybe what they SHOULD track is RBI – LOB somehow. How many times you drove in the run minus how many times you left him there on base? Kind of like the +/- in hockey. Doesn’t matter how many chances you get, it’s what you do with them…
Of course, I’m sure the brain trust at the Bill James baseball statistics institute for the insane has already done this, and I just haven’t read that far into the manual.
The Tom Boswell influence is showing here, Joe, because you’re basically just a step or two away from his Total Average calculation.
“Okay, I’ve got the total number of bases the guy is responsible for at the plate, maybe I should add his bases from running as well. Yeah, that would make sense. But just adding up all those bases wouldn’t tell me as much as figuring out how many outs he used to compile them. Yeah, that makes even more sense. It would be, like a ratio. Hmmm, I wonder what a catchy name for this stat would be….”
Along those same lines (take note, Mr. Boswell):
Total Average in 2008:
Albert Pujols – 1.278
Ryan Howard – .885
(Note: Yeah, I know Total Average is wildly flawed. I just posted this for the irony factor.)
I agree with jeffsol – as a guy who grew up with AVG/HR/RBI what really made sense to me in understanding the importance of OBP is that it’s the % of time the player DOESN’T make an out.
Tony Muser and others have made the semi-comical, semi-interesting assertion that doubles are sometimes better than home runs because they keep rallies going and keep the pressure on pitchers
Until I start seeing intentional balks, I will assume that even the managers saying this dont believe it.
Interesting thing about BBs is the way that they are viewed differently for batters & hitters. The neanderthal sportwriters who think that using BBs to evaluate hitters is “new-fangled & vorp-y” are the same guys who not only think, but say, that “walks kill pitchers,” and “oh, those bases on balls.”
Yet somehow they see no illogic in saying what’s bad for the goose is irrelevant for the gander?
I’m guessing that Ryan Howard’s “late and close” hitting dropped because, in many of those situations, the other team’s manager said, “I’m bringing in my LOOGY to paralyze this big basher.”
I think the reference to slugging % is flawed because it includes BA. The .251 BA of Howard lowers his slugging %. A better stat would be isolated slugging which I think was .292 in his case, a pretty good one. By comparison, Pujols’s isolated slugging % was .296. I don’t know it, but I am guessing that his ranking would be higher than 7th in the NL if based on isolated slugging %.
Also, while Howard has no claim to the MVP, we should be aware that he did walk a lot. 81 BBs in 700 plate appearances may not match the performance of Pujols and some other greats, but it isn’t bad.
Hey Joe,
Don’t forget about “The Great Space Coaster”!! What a great show. I used to watch it every day before school. My favorite part was the “No gnews is good gnews with Gary Gnu”. For those of you familiar with this show I guarantee that the theme song is now firmly implanted in your head for the rest of the day…you’re welcome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAwVIZDAUF0&feature=related
RBI do have a century-plus of momentum behind them, and that’s gonna take probably about as long to slow it down and derail it.
One thing about RBI is that they can accumulate by more than +1 at a time. I cannot think of another offensive counting baseball stat where this is true except total bases. Hits (of any time), runs, walks, strikeouts, each accrues at a plodding +1 pace. But RBI can be +2, +3, even +4 on rare occasions. So the sum gets BIGGER, and bigger numbers look spiffier and more exciting.
My general response to RBI when it pops up in a discussion is “yeah, that’s nice” — I recognize it’s not going to go away, but it tells me so little that I wouldn’t much miss it if it did.
“Walks are undervalued. But if you use the example that you gave, only subbed hits in for walks. Then if a player reached base on a hit every single time up, then they would be even MORE valuable than the batter who walked. And of course, the hit has the ability to be more than just a single…”
I think that you misunderstand. Yes, getting a hit every time is better than walking every time. The idea was to show just how underappreciated the walk is. Many ‘baseball people’ still seem to consider the walk as something bad (and at least one baseball manager has stated his opinion that walks simply “clog the basepaths”). I’m sure that there are many baseball managers who will claim to prefer a run-scoring groundout to a walk.
I was born in the late 60s and remember having the AVG-HR-RBI mantra drummed into us. It was not that long ago that I still believed that certain pitchers “pitched to the score” in order to explain how a pitcher with a high ERA still had a winning record. It’s amazing, the extent to which we tried forcing the facts to fit our theories. It’s more amazing to see this kind of thinking continue to be offered to us on baseball broadcasts and in much of the analysis we can view and read.
You don’t have to sell me on runs, my favorite player is Slidin’ Billy Hamilton. And not just because I’m 5′6″.
Maybe there should be a stat called “isolated patience”.
Also, probably there should be double plays subtracted in your final number, since those take away bases from the team.
I’d have to say that RsBI is a tougher statistic to boost than Runs. Consider that you get credit for a run scored simply by crossing the plate. You could have gotten on base in any way possible (hit, walk, HBP, error, interference, pinch-running, fielder’s choice, etc…), and you can score via any means possible (same as above + balks, double play grounders, wild pitches, stolen bases, etc…).
Compared to getting credit for an RBI, yes, you get credit with a groundball or a sac fly, but you lose out on all errors, balks, double-play grounders, and an assortment of other situations.
I hate both statistics, but it would seem runs are easier to generate in the stats column than RsBI.
Maybe there should be a stat called “isolated patienceâ€.
Isolated Discipline do ya?
OBP-BA, ie the contribution of walks to OBP.
Neither runs or RBIs are very meaningful, but…
RBIs have to be nominally more difficult than runs to amass, because they are ever-so-slightly rarer. Take a look at the league totals as a whole, and there will be a bit more runs scored than RBIs!
I watched a lot of bad TV in my childhood. But if Zoom were my only choice, I’d rather go out in the rain and play. Least funny 60s sitcom The Ghost and Mrs. Muir or Hazel?
This kind of repetitive, hysterical diatribe warrants no comment.
Discipline sound like punishment.
Or sounds, if you will.
…and the Guillen bashing continues. Translation:
“…other than the 25 percent of the season where he was on fire and was the hottest hitter in baseball he sucked.”
I’m curious when the last time was that the Royals had a player similarly hot for 25 percent of the season. Everyone knows he had a tough start to the season, and he’s certainly not All Star caliber, but I doubt Teahen playing right the full year would have produced anything near what he did.
Bellylard,
there is a fringe statistic called “isolated discipline” which is essentially OBP minus batting average. The average hovers around .070 (i.e. a walk every 14 AB’s)
Alright people, time to get cracking on JoePo’s Christmas present. (I’m presuming here.) I move we create a big three of posting stats. So, say, a 1.50/.950/.550 would indicate that for that year, Joe wrote 1.5 posts a day, 95 percent of them were interesting/topical, and he hit 55 percent of them out of the park. Who’s with me?
No love on the JoePo Web site for Zoom? That show was an absolute classic.
Eighteen votes for Howdy Doody. I think we just learned a little about the demographics here.
Hi, Dad!
I hope “Somebody” from the Boswell comments thread sees this. Very well done.
I’m sure Joe would agree that GTB isn’t a be all and end all as Total Average purported to be. Lots of flaws, obviously, but it’s a nice Q&D tool. Any stat that comes up with Babe Ruth 1921 as the best season in history is doing at least one thing right…
“Shouldn’t GTB include stolen bases less caught stealing as well?”
Yeah, it should also include those extra baserunning bases – like going first to third on a single more often than league average – that Joe referenced in a post a couple weeks ago.
Glad to see the Electric Company getting some love in the poll.
For those of you who have kids: New version of the Electric Company premieres January 19, 2009 on PBS.
I think you’re severely underrating hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean, Joe. Look at our current economic climate – you’ve got Lehman, AIG, Bear Stearns, your Park Places, Marvin Gardens and Pennsylvania Avenues of the world all going under. (I look at Goldman as Boardwalk, and they’re going to survive, Gloria Gaynor style). But then you’ve got your smaller companies that were fiscally smart, didn’t overextend themselves and are going to ride out this storm. Would you mortgage Baltic and Mediterranean if you were up against it, but you still had the reds available to mortgage? Of course not, because you’re not going to bring in a ton of money from mortgaging the dark purples, but if someone bounces a space or three to far past go, that’s a tidy $450 to slide under your side of the board. And people always land on Baltic and Mediterranean. I’m going to take a Bozian stance on this one and say damn any statistics that say otherwise.
OK, so who here plays Strat-O-Matic baseball? I was born in ‘82, and like the other children of the 80s/early 90s grew up only knowing about BA HR and RBI. However, in 1993, Santa Claus brought me Strat-O-Matic on Christmas morning and changed my life forever.
Not only does Strat have OBP and SLG on the player cards, but when you start playing the game, you begin to fully comprehend just how important they are, especially OBP.
Now if some of you haven’t heard of Strat, the basic idea is that each player’s card has 3 columns with a series of outcomes based on that year’s statistics. You roll dice to determine each at bat in a game–one die tells you what column to look at, and you add up the other two to get the result. Every decent player has a column that, more often than not has more good outcomes than bad outcomes–a “good column.”
Well, what Strat teaches you is that if you walk a lot, you have more than one good column. Because if you look at the elite players like Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez, they’ll have an entire column that is almost all walks. Then they have an entire column that’s made up of good stuff like homers and doubles.
Strat is great because it translates the value of getting on base and hitting for power right in front of you. Yeah, Strat cards have RBI, but you quickly learn that if you put an amazing power hitter in a lineup with a bunch of people who don’t get on base, he is not going to reproduce that gaudy RBI number.
So for those of you who still believe that average and RBI are the gospel, I beg of you, put Strat-O-Matic on your Christmas list. It is about a billion times more fun than fantasy baseball and it will teach you so much about the game.
Joe,
Great post. If I could present that kind of in-depth statistical analysis, but pertaining to soccer…well then, I’d have succeeded at something greater than me.
(P.S. Baseball and soccer are my favorite sports, so I am trying to find a soccer version of Baseball Prospectus to help me incorporate stats into player evaluations.)
Just to illustrate my point, here are images of two players’ strat cards: Juan Gonzalez and Barry Bonds’s 2001 card, which is probably the greatest Strat card ever. Sorry, I’m not sure what year Gonzalez’s card is from.
Juan Gone: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/btf/img/2level/jgonzalez.jpg
Bonds: http://www.strat-o-matic.com/sphere/bondsa.jpg
So look at those two cards. Juan Gone is a good home run hitter, BUT THAT’S ALL HE CAN DO. He’s like Ryan Howard. Bonds, on the other hand, is almost impossible to get out. He’s like Albert Pujols. Boswell needs to play some Strat-O-Matic. That will straighten him out.
Great article; I agree with all those above, this is a clever, but relatively gentle primer for convincing “old-school” (ie misguided) clingers to RBI and the like.
I am also reminded of the W/L stat for pitchers. I won’t go into the reasons it is so flawed, because everybody here probably already knows that. However, is there a stat out there that tries to calculate “true wins” or “wins deserved” or something like that? I would approach it simply, maybe using the amount of games started where the earned runs/9 (or maybe it would be better to use FIP or tRA or whatever) compares favorably to to the team’s runs/game. If the starter is responsible for an amount of runs, extrapolated to nine innings, that is less than the teams’ average runs scored, he “deserves” a win. Is there anything like this? Would this be a decent way to calculate it? If there were, I think it might be a helpful way to ease people into recognizing the not-so-obvious complexities and flaws of the popular pitching stats.
I remember a book called “The Kid Who Only Hit Homers” by Matt Christopher. Pretty much lived off of his books between the ages of 7 and 12.
TB- I’ve got about 3 years on you, and also learned about the importance of OBP (and relative unimportance of things like pitcher wins and RsBI) from SOM. I have at least the 1992, ‘94 and ‘97 card sets at my parents’ house somewhere, and now I have the sudden urge to dig them out…
The computer sims (Diamond Mind especially) are great, and DM is better than SOM in that both the pitcher and the batter (supposedly) figure into each AB, so it’s not the batter on 1-3 or pitcher on 4-6 (I remember getting really frustrated that 1994 Greg Maddux would walk four guys a game because the roll ended up on the hitters’ card).
But yeah, you definitely lose something by not being able to see the breakdown like on the backs of those cards–I wonder what Bonds’ ‘04 card looks like. Does he make an out on a 1-3 roll at all?
Nice blog as i was one of those guys to ask for it. It reminds me of that “chicks dig the long ball commercial”
I was always a big fan of on base percentage when i played high school and what not (too scared to make an out). Moneyball is just as interesting to read now, than when it came out. It was never about the giambis (or the big three pitchers of course) it was about the next generation of A’s that were drafted — and, umm, scott hatteberg. As such, it’s interesting to see how they all panned out. The answer, i can best surmise is, ehhh.
I also like the Runs Created stat to determine a players production (runs + rbi’s – hr’s), how do you feel about that in lieu of just looking at runs scored or ribbies?
Soccer… wow. That’s gonna be tough to sabermetrize. Fouls? Corners? Shots on target? It’s going to be difficult to quantify how well the fullbacks keep scoring threats under control (maybe shots permitted on target per game or something).
Hockey fans have the same difficulty, and a lot of the newer stats people are trying to use to quantify performance have holes one could drive a Zamboni through.
Well, I suppose a team could just hire a miget. As long as they didn’t swing, they would probalby just walk every time and be replaced by a pinch runner. My grandfather told me St. Louis tried this in fifties, although he though it was just a stunt(the guy had a fractional number and everything, and walked on 4 pitches).
There is such a stat. It’s called ISOBP.
Chris — that Sparky Lyle book was hilarious. I still can’t figure out (in all seriousness) why teams don’t trash-talk their opponents with scoreboard trivia; that seems like a great idea to me.
Wayne Tollison:
You don’t lose RBIs on all errors. Man on 3rd, less than 2 outs, infield playing back, a grounder that goes through an IF’s legs is going to result in an RBI on the assumption that the run would have scored on the groundout anyway.
I’m a huge soccer fan as well and one of the things I love about it is because it is the opposite of baseball in that it is nearly impervious to statistical analysis. I can appreciate both kinds of sports. Though it would be cool if someone tried to come up with some meaningful stats for soccer other than goals and assists. MLS Cup this weekend…
Which leads me to this point: I think where the Moneyball people lose a lot of the unconverted is when they start using advanced metrics like VORP, EqA, and RC/27. There is value in those stats, and I’m a fan of all the work BP does, but asking fans brought up on AVG, HR, RBI to suddenly adopt VORP seems like a bit much. Baby steps. Stat guys should be trying to get fans into the “new†triple crown stats of AVG/OBP/SLG, which I just love because it tells you so much about a player so quickly. I think the jump to OPS is sort of a mistake, as it ignores the components of OPS. Though I do like OPS+ (and ERA+) because it is a quick way to show a player’s value relative to the league.
“200 people did NOT vote for Sesame Street!? They better have all been born before 1965!!”
I was. I’m too old for all this stuff except the Flintstones, which is fitting I suppose.
And seeing Wayne Tolleson’s name above reminds me that his son is playing in the Arizona Fall League.
You know who I want more than the guy who walks in every PA? The guy who gets a single in every PA.
I didn’t play Strat, but I was an avid APBA player back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and I remember noticing the same things. I realized that a guy like Rick Burleson, with a fair number of “hits” on his card, but not too many “14s” (walks), was a far inferior leadoff man to a guy like Dwight Evans.
At one point I subscribed to APBA’s newsletter, and they had an article explaining the formulas they used to create player cards. It included a table of several hitters’ stats, and it didn’t include runs or RBI. That confused me at first, but then I made the then-startling, now-obvious conclusion that those stats were heavily influenced by circumstance. The cards could only simulate how often a player got on base or had “long hits,” but if you switched the batting order (or played in a league that drafted their own teams), a Dwight Evans might score 110 runs instead of 80.
So it’s kind of funny, but playing a simulated game like APBA was in some ways my first real introduction to sabermetrics–or at least the value of OBP and certain game strategies–several years before I had even heard of Bill James. That’s not meant to belittle James at all, because he articulated it in such a brilliant and entertaining way, and went way beyond anything I learned by rolling 66s or drooling over a shortstop with a “10″ rating!
JoePoz: “I remember reading a kids book about the possibility, “The Boy Who Always Walked†or something”
I believe that was “The Kid Who Batted 1000″ by Bob Allison, a Scholastic book furst published in 1954. (It also featured a washed-up pitcher turned scout — he discovered the kid — whose arm was rejuvented by some kind of farm animal grease unguent.)
Looking for an easily-lifted synopsis of “The Kid Who Batted 1000″ on the internet, I find that your Brilliant Readers Brent, Jim Haas & Dan Curry mentioned the book in their comments to your 13 Oct 08 “From the Notebook: The Library” post on babbed Books Week.
Banned boobs Weej, that is.
One more confirming that it’s “The Kid Who Batted 1.000″ There’s also a Freddy the Pig book where he forms a baseball team and part of the strategy is that the martians have such small strike zones that they always walked.
I think the biggest problem with OBP as a stat is that no one makes a big deal about crossing 400 the same way we make a big deal about batting 300. It’s like the metric system. We know how it works, but we don’t have an intuitive grasp of what they signfy in the real world.
I’m on cloud nine here. I’ve only posted on this blog one time, ever, and I correctly ID’d the title of an obscure book. By my measurement, that equates to a home run and gives me a career slugging % of 1.000, and makes me hesitant to post again for fear of lowering my average. Which raises an important question: What good is a statistical measurement (such as slug%) if doing something good (a single) actually hurts you statistically? And what is the baseball equivalent of this post?
1. Tonus, we didn’t miss the point. A batter that got a hit every time up would be more valuable than the guy who walked every time. Walks are being drilled so much, it seems people would prefer the walk to hits. Walks are important, but I have a hard time believing players should be penalized for not walking (unless they are hacking). Take a guy like Callaspo. He has a high contact rate, low strikeouts (32 BBs, 34 Ks over 3 years, 399 ABs, 0 Homers). He is so good at making contact, he rarely misses when he swings. He also has no power, so pitchers aren’t afraid to throw to him, which also lowers the walk total. This to me says that a player has to prove himself a good hitter with occasional power to start getting extra walks, or to make that elite jump to Bonds type territory. Otherwise you have to foul off pitch after pitch to increase your walks. Point is, walks aren’t a separate skill from just being a good patient hitter. As a sidenote, I don’t take offense to walks being valuable, just the equally valuable as hits part.
2. The Royals fly in your face against Runs = RBI. The Royals cannot score runs in part because they can’t get on base, but also because they need 3 singles to get 1 run, and that’s if Billy Butler isn’t the lead runner. Unless you steal or wild pitch, or walk with the bases loaded, it is the batted ball that scores the run, making the RBIs more important.
3. David DeJesus, Clutch or Luck, you decide.
4. Sesame Street sucks. Elmo makes me want rip out my eardrums. Yes, I have a child that likes Elmo.
5. The home run as rally ender/killer happens all the time. Sometimes the pitcher can’t get it together and the rally continues. Other times, the inning ends quickly after the bases are cleared. So I think what they are talking about usually involves scoring 5 or more runs with the bases serving as a giant merry go round. If you homer, sometimes the ride stops.
JJ. A single is 1.000 in slugging percentage. A Homer is 4.000. It is a measure of total bases per at bat.
A hitter can knock in 97 runs, or have 97 ribbies, but I don’t think it’s correct to say that he knocked in 97 ribbies.
I know, it’s a blog and ribbies is slang anyway, so who cares? It just grates on me for some reason, sorry.
I know its rediculous, and I could of not mentioned it, but irregardless of why it bothers myself, it makes my head literally blow up all of the sudden. Anyways, at the end of the day, it is what it is, for all intensive purposes.
I think part of the reason walks are valued so much is that, well, unless your Vlad-Go-Go-Gadget-Arms Guerrerro, you wern’t gonna hit those pitches anyway. So the walks are like a free time on base when you wern’t gonna get a hit anyway.
Good stuff. Anybody think GTB/PA might tell us something useful? Kind of like SLG, but with other important stuff included?
Joe, one of my favorite stat lines from last year is Nick Johnson’s. Granted he only played 38 games last year before he was injured, but it looks like he was having a dreadful season:
.220 avg, 5 HR, 20 RBI
But that ignores his .415 OBP (it’s incredible that he could have a AVG/OBP disparity of .195!) or his .431 SLG or his 123 OPS+ or his strong defense.
Thanks Ezyryder…I knew that…guess my slug% is plummeting with each post.
Awesome stuff. Thanks Joe!
Great article. I feel compelled to turn baseball fans away from judging players based on AVG-HR-RBI…those that still do. However, it becomes a controversy. The power of tradition is amazing.
Colin, in think Grand Total Bases (GTB) or GTB/PA is essentially another version of Runs Created. But it’s useful to look at it this way, especially for those who don’t trust pesky sabermetric types.
“If you are about my age*, then you grew up as a baseball fan with three statistics and only three statistics. There was batting average. There were home runs runs. And there were RBIs. That was it.”
Which is exactly the problem with the BBWAA. Because they’re ALL (well, 99% or so) your age or older. And they’re like the aging, withering lion trying to hold on to his pride despite the fact that the young male is going to kick his ass three ways from Sunday.
Doesn’t matter how many chances you get, it’s what you do with them…
Ermmm… no. It most definitely DOES matter how many chances you get. If you had 500 runners in scoring position and you have 100 ribbies, is that then just as good as a guy who had 120 RISP and hit 80 ribbies?
I had my watershed moment reading rec.sport.baseball beginning about 1993. It still took me a few weeks of reading it before I finally got over my BA/HR/Rbi fetish.
It’s funny to see how still ingrained it is with my dad. Although he’s pretty unorthodox, and open to new ideas, he still can’t seem to get over it, despite my years of preaching. I remember going to a Tiger/Indian game this summer with him, and he pointed out someone with a bunch of RsBI, kinda like “wow, he’s a great slugger”. And I had to remind him, as I have any time the issue has come up over the last 15 years, that RBI and BA are junk. So he nodded, knowingly. And then Grady Sizemore came up and I made the comment that he was one of the best leadoff men in baseball (in fact, too good to be leading off), and he reverted to form: “but he’s only hitting .276!”.
And then I had to say “Dad – what have I said about batting average?!”. And he laughed, and nodded. But I still don’t think he really believes it…
btw, I remember that book about the kid who always walked. By the end of the season, the opposing manager would put on a special shift, with almost all his players playing along the foul lines. And in his last at bat he hit a homerun…
Nightfly,
You know, that how many shots (or crosses) a defender allows would be an interesting calculation. Perhaps an average per match could completely discredit LA defender Sean Franklin’s 2008 MLS Rookie of the Year award. (LA conceded the most goals of any team in MLS, and yet, one of their backs wins the award.)
I would assume this is comparable to a linebacker whose team gives up the most rushing yards/rushing TDs winning a ROY. I dunno. I’m thinking out loud. I like how Joe uses stats to make arguments for/against award winners. I’d like to do the same with MLS players.
I was in college when Sesame St started, I watched it constantly with MY kids. I want to see “Leave it to Beaver”, “Roy Rogers”, “The Rifleman”, “Highway Patrol”. YAY Capt. Kangaroo!
Okay, I’m impressed: in a “language usage smak” post about ribbies, Buch manages to misspell “ridiculous,” use “irregardless” when he means “regardless,” butcher the meaning of “literally,” and spell “intents and” as “intensive.”
I fear I have been trolled. In my defense, it’s been a while since my days on alt.fan.warlord and alt.flame.spelling.
Fantastic column. I’ve always thought guys like Brett and Yount, Puckett, etc were actually more “powerful” than guys like Dave Kingman, etc. i.e guys who hit a lot of home runs but provide little else at the plate. This gives me some insight I didnt have before.
Steve Buffum
And you didn’t even mention all the comma splices, improper use of the reflexive (”it bothers myself”), “anyways”, the improper “could of” instead of “could have” (or “could’ve”).
I think you’re right — all the “errors” HAD to have been intentional.
Or at least, intensional.
With regards to hits and walks – clearly a hit is more valuable than a walk. All other things being equal (SLG, etc), if two guys both have .350 OBPs, and one guy hit .250 and the other .280, the .280 hitter is going to be more valuable.
However – and this is important – I’d rather see a player hit .280/.350 than .320/.350, because you know the latter player is going to fall off a cliff, and fast (see Cano, Robinson, or Paul Lo Duca’s 2006). Maybe the .320/.350 hitter had a more valuable season that one time, but he’s highly unlikely to keep it up. As a general rule of thumb, if a player’s OBP is much less than 50 points higher than his AVG, you can assume he’s going to have difficulty repeating his performance. So, yes, hits are more valuable than walks, but if you never walk, you probably won’t hit.
So, for what it’s worth, TPJ had roughly 3.9% of the Royals PA but 4.7% of their outs
Steve and Random: Ya, the erros were intensional.
I was trying to see how many word “tics” that bug me I could fit into a couple of sentences.
avg/hr/rbi are WAY overrated. There was a lot of fuss about Ryan Howard getting the MVP based on those stats alone. If you look at those stats, especially HR and RBI, then it looks like Howard is a fantastic hitter. It doesn’t take into effect that all he can do is hit homeruns and strikes out more than almost anyone ever.
100% of all RBI started with somebody being safe at first. But less than 100%of all folks who become safe on first score runs. The only way to increase the opportunity for an RBI (other than by hitting homers) is to get more folks on base. The reason Rickey deserved MVP in 1985, not Brett, not Mattingly, is not only did he have an ungodly year scoring runs, but he also put himself into scoring position (via a stolen base or extra base hit) a lot of the time. I had to go back to Ty Cobb before I found a year that I thought was clearly better for a leadoff hitter.
That said, there is a problem with the example of somebody walking every at bat. Walks require having the bases loaded in order to drive in a run. They require a man on first in order to even advance a runner. If somebody that walked every at bat was considered more valuable than somebody hitting like Pujols, or Bonds in his best years, then there would be no intentional walks. Admittedly, managers diverge on how often they intentionally walk players, but almost everybody will walk (say) Pujols with runners on second and third in a close game with less than two outs. Manny Ramirez was intentionally walked more (as a percentage of opportunity; he was only in LA two months) than any Dodger I can remember. So being realistic, walks are fine things, but the ability to drive in runs, especially multiple runs, is also valuable. For what it’s worth, Pujols clearly outhit Howard with men on base this season. You can’t really penalize Pujols for not having Rollins and Utley batting in front of him; he made more of his opportunities, even though he had fewer of them.
I played strat starting around age 10 (1979) and it defintiely helped me with the concept of OBP. OBP wasn’t on the cards back then, but we quickly figured out dice combinations and would count “points” on a hitters card (essentially, dice combinations, 6 points for a hit on 1-7, 1 point for a hit on 2-2).
As for “Runs Produced”, Bill James effectively debunked this 20+ years ago. They aren’t RUNS being counted, they are half runs, so subtracting the HR makes no sense. Reyes hits a leadoff triple and after the #2 hitter strikes out, Wright drives him home with a single — they each get 1 “Run Produced” for a total of 2, even though only 1 run has scored. On the other hand, Beltran comes up with 2 outs and nobody on and parks one in the seats, he only gets 1 “Run Produced”, despite thet fact that he’s done the job of both people in the previous example. Just a terribly designed stat — Runs + RBI would be better than the silliness of subtracting the HR.
When I was in 4th grade, I played one year of Little League. I was a reasonably slick second sacker who would occasionally rush a play and go Knoblauch (but I never hit Olberman’s mom…).
I came to bat 27 times. 6 Ks, 1 HBP, 20 BB. When I didn’t make the All-star team (which was fine, I didn’t expect to), the coach did say he appreciated my getting on base so much. This was 1975. *Somebody* got it then… As I got to understand OBP and the difference between it and BA I thought it was cool, but quickly realized I’d never have dependable access to it…
LLarry, that’s great. My first year of Little League was also 1975. I had a batting average of .000 (no joke), yet I was the lead-off hitter. I can’t recall my stats as you have, but I walked a lot. I’d guess my OBP must’ve been over .500, not including the standard parade of errors that 7 year-olds are good for.
Somewhat related, my first and last PAs in Little League were both HBPs: Leadoff HBP in 1975; bases loaded HBP (game winning ribbie, thank you very much*) in 1977. That much I do remember.
* I took one for the team on purpose. Even at 9 years-old, I knew I was no hitter.
(And sorry for the unauthorized use of the pozterisk.)
Brian the OC: A guy who does a great FC Barcelona blog made a first stab at doing some soccer sabermetrics for Barca yesterday:
http://barcelona.theoffside.com/statistics/soccer-prospectus-pt-1.html
I’ll put this in the comments of the most recent thread as well, in case you’re done with this one.
I didn’t get through all the comments, so I apologize if this question was already answered. Bill Veeck signed Eddie Gaedel(a midget- little person??) to a one day contract for the St. Louis Browns, and his number, as I recall, was 1/2. I know it must have thrown the pitcher off, but is there any doubt that Maddux would have struck him out on no more than 5 pitches?
“In the early-to-mid 1970s when I started collecting cards, the only numbers they had on the back other than the core three: at-bats, hits, doubles and triples. It wasn’t until 1977 1976* that Topps even put RUNS on the back on cards. In 1978, they added games.”
- Joe, I stopped collecting – and caring, in truth – about baseball cards with the advent of the 1971 season (though, I retain a few of my favorite ballplayers whose last days a career took them a few years beyond.)
Hadn’t looked at my cards in so long I had forgotten but you are correct: all of my cards afore and up through 1972 had the stats for “games” & “runs” among other stats – but come ‘73 said went by the wayside – POOF – like the Edsel.
Man I hate progress (to decline, as such)…
: )
Joe, excellent post as always! I would just add two things: If Bonds or The Babe walked every single time, not only would they have more bases, but they would not have made any outs!
Pitching coaches and pitchers know how devastating a walk can be.
Aside from SB and CS (like people have commented on earlier), I think you’d have to throw in RBOE’s and FC’s, because there is some correlation between those and a player’s foot speed.
The reason Ryan Howard hit .158 in late-and-close situations is simple: Ryan Howard is, simply put, the reason why God and/or Tony LaRussa gave us the LOOGY.
I agree that rbi present an incomplete picture, but I would argue your point that scoring a run takes more skill than driving one in. I think both are dependent on your teammates. Howard certainly benefitted from having Rollins, Werth, Utley, etc. on base in front of him, which helped him drive in those runs.
At the same time, if Utley was hitting in front of Pena, Buck, and Gload, he would have scored far fewer runs than he did.
Yes, to drive in runs you have to have guys get on base in front of you – but you also have to drive them in when they are on base – I’d argue that takes skill.
To score runs, you have to get on base (in one of a variety of ways, most of which take skill) but you still have to have someone else drive you in.
I think my conclusion, as we have all realized well before this, is that individual statistics – any single statistic – presents an incomplete picture of a player.
Keep in mind also that in the age before computers, box scores didn’t tally up daily statistics. They were tallied up at the end of the week. The Kansas City Star/Times, for example, included in the sports section every Friday a list of players in the league ranked by (brace yourself) average, home runs, and RBIs. There wasn’t much room for any of the exotic stats that current websites now have room for.
Ditto for baseball cards. I can still remember squinting through my glasses to see Carl Yastremski’s career in 3-point font from beginning to end on hte back of a small piece of cardboard.
Plus, as for the walk fetish Bill James devotees have wrought and all of the after-effects, I would submit that pitching in the 1970s and 1980s is much less aggressive than it is now.
Without a sustainable means of communicating the stats, it was hard for even the most enthusiastic stat geek to put together the numbers 25 years ago like they can now.
**I would submit that pitching in the 1970s and 1980s is much less aggressive than it is now.**
ugh. I meant much more aggressive then than it is now.
I understand how important the walk is, however I am trying to decide how much importance we give it as an OFFENSIVE stat. It seems the original stat geeks of the early 1900’s viewed it as an error on the pitcher, treating it as if the AB never happened. Are we now giving the hitter too much credit when the pitcher can’t find the strike zone?
Runs vs. RBI — Runs are a MUCH better indicator of baseball talent than RBI. As Bill James pointed out in one of his very early writings, you can almost always tell the best athlete on a team by looking for the player with the most runs. Quick example: Mickey Mantle led the Yankees in runs every year from 1953 through 1961; he led the team in RBI “only” 5 times.
HR vs. singles — I have heard more than one announcer (Jim Kaat comes immediately to mind) say that he would RATHER give up a home run, even with the bases loaded, than a “smaller” hit, because the HR is “a rally-killer”. He does not seem to be joking when he says this.
Walks vs. hits — Obviously, hits are more important because they potentially could involve more than a one-base advance. However, walks are greatly underrated, even now, because they are less “manly” or something. But the MOST IMPORTANT skill in baseball is the ability to NOT MAKE OUT. Obviously, walks are a way of not making out.
I believe Eddie Gaedel’s number was 1/8. And Bill Veeck told him that there was a sniper in the stands who would shoot him dead if he swung the bat. He walked on four pitches, was pinch-run for, and was never heard from again.
Ah, the good old days.
Joe,
The evidence against your contention that the RBI is overrated is right in your article: The best percent success in all MLB is only 21.5% of the time. The best in all MLB is FAR lower than the league batting average! That means it is harder than getting a hit, and WAY harder than getting on base. On average, pitchers are tougher when it matters most: with men on base.
Ryan only batted .158 late and close? Maybe he won about his share of the time, when the pitcher was doing everything he could to beat him or pitch around him.
Editor’s note: Mike, you’re misreading the numbers. 21.5% is the percentage when there’s someone on ANY BASE, including first base. Good hitters will drive in the runner from third 40 to 50 percent of the time, more with less than two outs. And the league average with runners in scoring position last year was .266 — with nobody on base it was .259. This is largely because of sacrifice flies, but the main point is that there is simply no evidence to support that pitchers are tougher with men on base. I suspect, since they are pitching from the stretch, the opposite is true.
[...] Batting Average, Home Runs, RBIs … abominable for a guy who was signed for $12 million per so he could hit with power. He was a total pain in the Hillman. And while he had a smoking hot 44-game stretch in the middle of the year (.380/.391/.659 with 10 home runs … and, yeah, two walks), the other 109 games he was, no exaggeration … [...]