RBI Kings

Dave Paisley

A couple off days ago I described how the baseball stathead community has disparaged the venerable RBI to the point of exhaustion. Some of the reasons they do so are understandable. For one, it relies (apart from home runs) on teammates being on base to drive in. I suggest that we not throw the baby out with the bath water -- that the problem is not that we revere the RBI guy too much, but that we don't revere the run scorers enough.

There are some key psychological reasons why we exalt the RBI guy over the run-scorer. First, when an RBI is achieved, the team scores a run, and it seems natural to focus on the guy who was just at bat. Secondly, the guy who scores a run, other than on a solo home run, is across the plate and in the dugout before you can blink, whereas the RBI guy is out there standing at first or second. And on home runs, the focus is always and inevitably on the guy that just hit it. So for all those reasons, no matter what type of hit it was, the focus is 90% on the RBI guy and perhaps a mere 10% on the guy who crosses the plate.

This notion of statheads that RBIs are a bad thing, and that RBI guys are undeserving of their accolades, can be shown to be erroneous to a large degree. RBIs aren't the result of some random set of circumstances that are primarily dependent on runners being on base ahead of a hitter. The biggest influence on RBIs is a hitter's slugging average, followed by batting order position. Note that these two things are not entirely independent, Nor are they independent of the quality of teammates preceding a hitter in the lineup.

To illustrate the correlation of pure slugging with RBIs, consider the following chart. It shows RBI/PA versus slugging average for the two hundred players who managed to accumulate at least 600 PA (typically much more) at a consistent batting order position from 1995 to 1999.

That may look like a fair amount of scatter, but with a .75 correlation, it's not bad for starters. Conventional baseball wisdom has long dictated that the top of the batting order have a high OBP guy at the top, followed by a hitter with "bat-handling" skills -- i.e. someone good at bunting, but without much power. The numbers three and four slots are reserved for the "best hitters", while the five and six spots are generally reserved for pure sluggers. After that, it's a bit of a crapshoot of whatever is left, with the worst hitter generally going last. League differences do come into play at the tail end, with the pitcher occupying the #9 slot in the NL, with some attendant nuances in lineup selection.

So let's investigate batting order position. For these same hitters, here's how slugging average varies by batting order position.

The chart clearly shows the tendency of the best slugging batters to occupy the #3 and #4 slots, followed by #5 and #6, with #1, #2 and #7 being about equal. The last two guys in the lineup are whatever else is left. Note that this data only includes hitters, so the #9 slots are exclusively American Leaguers.

Based on the previous two charts, it's possible to estimate the RBI/PA for each position based simply on the slugging average (the red line in the chart below). On top of that, I've superimposed the actual RBI/PA for those players (the blue line).

The difference is due primarily to the lineup position. As I noted earlier, the biggest difference is in the leadoff hitter. Leadoff hitters spend about 40% of their plate appearances leading off an inning, when RBI opportunities are rare, so the 25% deficit is somewhat expected. The interesting thing to note here is that the #3 hitter is about neutral, while the #4 through #9 hitters experience, on average, an 8% premium on RBIs.

What does all this mean, then? First of all, Every batting position but the leadoff guy is going to be within 10% of their expected RBI numbers. Freak RBI years are a combination of extraordinary on base activity by the guys ahead of a hitter and good fortune in bringing them home. But over the long haul, it's not surprising that the best RBI guys do tend to be the best players. And those guys gravitate through natural selection to the best RBI spots in the order.

Is it bad that Juan Gonzalez can give the evil eye to a scorer to get an error changed to a hit so he gets the RBI? Sure. Is it bad that Joe Carter is revered just because he was a so-so player in the right place at the right time? Yes it is. But do these extremes mean that RBIs are meaningless? Absolutely not.

Next time you're at a game, check out when the crowd cheers the loudest after a good play. I'll be shocked if it isn't when a run crosses the plate. So don't begrudge the guy at the plate his glory, but make sure you save some for the guy coming home from third.

about the author

Dave Paisley is too modest to say, but he still gets angry e-mail from Kevin Mitchell. If anyone can contact Salman Rushdie, Dave needs his advice at drdjp@strikethree.com.