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RBIs: Really Bad Indicators
If you listen to some of the offseason detractors in Red Sox Nation, you will hear whining about the loss of Jason Bay – that without his offense, and no single big-name bat to replace him, and ergo the Red Sox will flounder this year. This ignores the improved defense at short, third, center and left. This also ignores the improved rotation and run prevention (see Lackey, John). And it also ignores that Mike Cameron, Adrian Beltre, and Marco Scutaro aren’t exactly terrible big-league hitters. Most of this mentality comes from the Old Guard, those RBI-loving, Wins-worshipping, milestone-clinging fans and writers that haven’t read or improved for decades.
Now before I get going, I want to make it clear: I am not a “SABR guy”. Two years ago, when I first started to really dig baseball – I’m talking fantasy baseball, playing games as a GM, tracking my teams moves and waiver wire, and starting to read far and wide on the subject – SABR stats were hard to avoid. At first I made fun of them – these things sounded more like old Batman series punch sounds than stats I could identify. FIP? VORP? THWACK? Ok, I made THWACK up.
But out of curiosity, and my duty as an open-minded, free-thinking human, I wanted to learn what these were and where they came from. Certain things always bothered me about baseball stats – Wins and Saves seemed so haphazard. For Wins, a starter needed to go at least 5 innings –but a reliever could come in anytime, throw one pitch, and luck himself into a win. A guy could be dominant for 9 innings, be up 1-0 and in line for a win, and then have an error land a guy at first, and a deep drive bounce off of Jose Canseco’s head and into the stands – and he gets a loss. No earned runs, but a loss nonetheless. Then there are the Yankee pitchers who can always count on 10-14 wins, even if they allow 5 runs a start, because their offense scores umpteen runs in those starts. Sounds like a winning effort!
But anyway, on to RBIs specifically. And we’re addressing this because some people point to RBIs as a reason for Ryan Howard to be considered for MVP, which makes SABR-minded folks go nutty. It also makes Red Sox fans flip out at losing Jason Bay’s 119 RBI, as if 119 less runs will be driven in this year. Not so.
To point out the flaw in this logic, let’s use an analogy. Let’s say you become the General Manager of a McDonalds. When you start to dig into the business, to see about employee performance, profits, and the like, you find that all McDonalds use a stat called BHOs (Bags Handed Out) to measure drive-through performance. If a window worker accumulates 100 BHOs in an hour, that was a good shift and they are rewarded. But you notice some flaws – the workers for the midnight shift get less traffic, while the lunch worker is almost guaranteed a high BHO number. It also doesn’t measure if there was actually a profit that day (win/loss), how efficient they were at completing orders, or anything else to really measure their performance. All BHOs tells you, is that an order was placed for something, and it got out the door. Not really helpful, right?
RBIs are exactly this stat. They don’t tell you how good a player is at driving in runs, just the raw number. It doesn’t take into account runners on base ahead of him, plate appearances, or if the RBI was off Johan Santana or Carlos Silva. It doesn’t even know if it was a hit, a sac fly, or an OUT that caused the RBI. Is 100 RBIs a real achievement for a Yankee cleanup hitter? Athletics cleanup hitter? How about Padres #8 hitter? Which is more impressive – 100 RBIs over 500 at-bats, or over 300 at-bats? Even then, you don’t know – if the 300 at-bats were all with the bases loaded, and the 500 at bats with none or one on, then the latter obviously took more slugging!
100 RBIs is generally the magic number for ‘slugger’ status. The usual example of this flawed logic pointed to among SABR folks is Ruben Sierra – look up his 1993 season for the Oakland A’s.
1993
HR: 22
RBI: 101
AVG: .233
OBP (On-Base Percentage): .288
Though he walked a decent amount (52, 16 intentional), Sierra’s batting average was .233. He slugged 22 homers, but struck out 97 times, compiling overall anemic offensive numbers. Yet, he managed 101 RBIs. Thankfully, he did not rank high on the MVP vote. That’s because he had 692 plate appearances – almost 700 times, he came to the plate that year. Is knocking in a run once every 7 trips to the plate a true slugger? (No – it’s actually the average.) Getting on base 28% of the time? I think we can all agree that isn’t notable. So what do those 101 mean? It means that Sierra got a paltry 77 hits, and aside from scoring himself 22 times with a homer, he managed to have 79 other runners on base (probably on second or third) when he came up. What did his batting ability have to do with that?
Another good example is Willy McGee. If you look at his career RBI totals, he collected 100 RBIs just once – in 1987. McGee fluctuated a bit over the years , but his 86-88 seasons are a good sampling. In ’87 he struck out 90 times, and ground into a career-high 24 double plays. He also, like the many years before, scored about 15-17% of the runners he inherited when he stepped to the plate. But unlike ’86 or ’88, when McGee collected 50 or less RBIs, in ’87 McGee had a total of 544 runners on base during his at bats. In ’86 there were 291, and ’88 saw 369. Two hundred more runners on? Yah, that might lead to 40 or 50 more RBIs.
So let’s end with a hypothetical. Ryan Howard collected in excess of 135 RBIs for four straight seasons. During this time, he has driven in between 18 and 21% of the runners on-base when he steps to the plate – many via homerun. So let’s take an average of his last 4 seasons (143 RBIs) and his % of runners scored (19.25%), and extrapolate a rough average of runners he inherits a season ([100/19.25] * 143 = 743 runners).
Now, let’s replace Ryan Howard with Yuniesky Betancourt. Betancourt is one of those annoying players we pick on – doesn’t do double-digit homers, RBI totals from 40-60, poor eye, doesn’t walk much – OBP maxes out at .310. Betancourt knocks in 14% of the runners he inherits at the plate. Put him as the cleanup batter for Philadelphia the last four years (14% x 743 runners), and you have an amazing 104 RBIs.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. This laughably bad shortstop could accumulate MVP RBI totals…if he batted behind Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins. Is he as good offensively as Ryan Howard? No, Ryan Howard knocked himself in about 40 more times a season thanks to the long-ball. Howard knocks in a higher percentage than average of inherited runners - entirely due to power, which is impressive. That runner on first is more likely to score on a Howard homer or deep double, than say on a Betancourt single. But it only tells you what we already knew – Howard has raw power, and as the Phillies cleanup hitter, that power is put to good use.
RBIs aren’t meaningless – but they are a bad indicator of performance. It’s a numerator without a divisor, and like any 3rd-grade math student knows, that’s incomplete. Knocking in 145 runs helps your team, certainly, and makes you valuable – but not quite as valuable as you might think. Power can already be measured in other useful ways – so next time, look at average, then on-base percentage, long before you ogle the RBI total.
