RBI Production Average

I spend a lot of time over at BTF, a site devoted to following current baseball events and the statistical study of the game.

While I enjoy most of the humor in the comments section (of BTF) and I admire much of the commentary, there are a few character flaws that seem mandatory for admission to the site.

A typical BTF user must:

1.Despise all professional baseball writers, ridiculing their logic, their style and their profession whenever possible.

2. Bud Selig, Dusty Baker, Steve Garvey, Tommy Lasorda, and Juan Pierre are to hated without question. Garvey more than others.

3. The Bush/Reagan/Nixon/(fill in Republican here) administration must be used, if at all possible, in a negative connotation completely irrelevant to the issue at hand

4. ‘Counting’ stats such as hits, wins, RBI”s, etc. are devalued in the face of saber metric measures such as OPS, ERA+, and others.

Now understand I’m just poking fun, because I do have a lot of fun on the site even if it grows tedious at times in its ‘snarkiness‘. It’s a damn fine place to visit and nary a day goes by without a looksie.

I’m bringing all this up because a recent article on the site resurrected the BTF’s semi-dismissal of the RBI as a worthwhile statistic.

RBI, or Runs Batted In, refers to a run driven in by a batter, generally but not exclusively via a hit.

The crux of the argument is that RBI is an overvalued statistic because it is dependent upon the actions of the batters in front of you in the lineup. You aren’t going to drive in a man from third, for example, if there’s no one standing there in the first place.

Or to paraphrase one reader “So you’re saying that some guy hit’s a leadoff double. The next batter hit’s a single but the runner holds on third. Then a guy hits a rinky-dink sacrifice fly to drive in the run and he deserves more kudos than the other two hitters?”

Well, yes and no. The bloke with the leadoff double gets credit for a Run, after all, but neither of the first two hits amount to jack without the RBI hit.

[and if you press the point, create a statistical category of ‘offensive assist’ for the guy who moved the runner over with the single]

Hey, I don’t pretend that RBI’s are the be-all and end-all of batting. Plenty of blockheads have crossed the coveted 100 RBI plateau ina season and been average or lucky players. But if you have a guy hit 100 RBI’s for five or six seasons in a row, or lead the league three years out of four, it ain’t all luck. Like it or not, the man has a genuine knack for productive hitting.

But how do you measure this, aside from the pure ’counting’ method? As I said, not all RBI’s are equal, and to some extent they are dependent upon the team as a whole.

So here’s my idea. [You’ll have to forgive me if I falter at points, having no knack for math and a mere semester of statistics a decade ago. Ditto if someone has (probably inevitably) come up with the same idea in a more professional or accommodating package, as I haven’t done any research outside of my balding skull. ]

If we were to simply compile a running average of how many RBI’s a batter produces related to the total number of RBI chances he’s given, wouldn’t that do the trick?

Let's call it, if only for today, the RBI Production Average. Here goes:

Each batter has a chance for an RBI with every plate appearance, as a solo home run produces one RBI. So if he fails to drive himself in, be it by striking out or ‘merely’ singling, he is 0/1.

Likewise, if the bases are loaded and no one scores, he is 0/4.

I would imagine, without crunching any hard numbers, that even a great150 RBI man would produce no better than a .200 average, assuming 600 plate appearances and a 1.25 chances/PA on a good team.

Meanwhile, if the same 150 RBI’s are produced in 600 PA’s, but the team is stocked with studs and the chances/PA rises to 1.5, that very same batter sits at a .166 average.

Should a batter produce 85 RBI’s in 450 plate appearances, with a 1.10 chances/PA he knocks down a .171 average.

So that 85 RBI guy is statistically more valuable than the 150 RBI batter in the second example.

Cons?

Well, the system is naturally skewed against punch-and-Judy hitters whose chances at a solo home run are slim, but frankly that’s the whole point of the discussion.

The system is also general in that it lumps RBI opportunities together. It’s easier to knock a guy in from third than from first or hit that solo homer, but that isn’t made clear in my ‘formula’.

So we should weight the formula so that you get more credit for driving the runner in from first . .or should we throw the balance the other way, as we should anticipate/demand the production of more RBI’s if a runner is on 2nd or 3rd to start?

For now I concede the point but offer no solution; if the idea is worthy I’m happy to hear a more adept mathematician work some magic.

Maybe this is all junk thought, and not worth the time spent at the keyboard. But . . .

The RBI as it’s understood right now is a ‘glam’ stat, honored and glorified but never put fully into context. I think my idea, or one like it, might just rectify that problem without reducing any of the statistics glamour or prestige.

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