RBI Vulture 1999 Style

Dave Paisley

Manny Ramirez has inherited Juan Gonzalez' RBI Vulture title this year, but much less has been made of his exploits than were made at this time last year about Juan. Of course, it doesn't help that Manny is relatively unknown as a personality outside of Cleveland, whereas Juan Gonzalez was a one-time MVP award winner this time last year. And let's not forget that Juan had pulled some interesting stunts during the early part of the season to inflate his RBI totals (surely you must remember the evil-eyed glare at the official scorer, who later changed an error into a hit, thereby crediting Gonzo with another RBI or two.)

So, with Ramirez almost at the 100 RBI mark, he is having a comparable season to Gonzalez last year, who was around 105 at the All-Star break. Gonzo, however, hit a major RBI drought right after the break, to the extent that he only had 115 by the end of July, a hitch that immediately took away any chance he had of matching Hack Wilson's record of 190 (recently increased to 191 -- something of a moving target.)

Just as an aside, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the researcher that discovered the extra RBI was motivated by Gonzo's antics last year. After all, if Gonzo can get scorers to change their calls to favor his RBI totals, why not scour the history books to see if there are any corrections that would make it harder for Gonzo to catch the record holder?

Manny Ramirez	G	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	OBP	SLG	RBI/PA
Apr	22	98	19	33	7	30	7	17	.381	.622	.286
May	27	99	24	36	7	33	20	25	.467	.636	.277
Jun	18	65	16	20	6	20	12	15	.413	.615	.260
Jul	11	41	12	12	5	13	7	12	.420	.732	.271
Total	78	303	71	101	25	96	46	69	.423	.640	.275

And here are Gonzalez' stats for last year.

Gonzalez 98	G	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	OBP	SLG	RBI/PA
Apr	25	107	21	38	7	35	4	23	.365	.645	.315
May	28	114	20	32	10	35	5	19	.333	.614	.294
Jun	28	109	16	28	7	25	10	25	.311	.523	.210
Jul	23	82	15	24	7	20	9	16	.359	.622	.220
Aug	24	91	20	32	8	27	11	24	.419	.725	.265
Sep	25	99	17	38	6	14	7	18	.426	.687	.132
Total	154	606	110	193	45	157	46	126	.366	.630	.241

Overall, Ramirez is taking the RBI race a little slower than Juan's pace early last year, but he's making up for that by being more consistent.

Of course, in the grand debate over the value of RBIs in general. Are they real indicators of baseball greatness, as the traditional point of view (and the media!) decrees? The reasoning here is that RBIs have always been one of the key yardsticks by which great sluggers have been measured. Or are they merely the by-product of batting in the right place at the right time? Here, the stathead point of view is that RBIs are much more dependent on the guys ahead of the slugger getting on base than they are of the slugger's ability.

There's no doubt that batting right behind guys who get on base a lot is much more pleasing on the RBI totals than batting right behind Otis Nixon, for instance, who almost never gets on base.

Personally, I lean to a middle viewpoint that says that RBIs aren't as important as tradition says, yet they are more important than statheads give them credit for. On the other hand, runs scored suffers the reverse fate, but is equally important. A guy like Craig Biggio, who gets on base a lot and scores a ton, has historically been undervalued, while sluggers like Juan are typically overvalued. Scoring a run for a team takes two things -- getting on base, which requires good on-base skills, and then coming round to home plate, which occurs most frequently when sluggers hit the ball hard.

So given this dependence on the guys ahead of "the RBI man", who exactly is it that's helping Juan and Manny rack up these totals, and can they be relied on to keep it up? Both Ramirez and Gonzalez bat fourth, so that gives us three primary guys ahead of them to look at.

Here's a table that summarizes the on-base performance of the main players who batted in at the top of the order.

Cleveland	1st Half	Texas 98	1st Half	2nd Half	Season
Lofton	.416	Goodwin	.369	.384	.378
Vizquel	.388	McLemore	.428	.319	.369
Alomar	.420	Greer	.378	.400	.386
Average	.408	Average	.388	.371	.380

For Texas last year, the lineup ahead of Gonzalez was Tom Goodwin, Mark McLemore and Rusty Greer. This held true for most of the season. The first half on-base performance was excellent for the three together, bolstered by insane numbers in April for both Goodwin and McLemore (.458 and .473 respectively.) The second half shows a significant drop, entirely due to McLemore's numbers falling off a cliff, as both the other guys actually improved. So without going into a lot of background, we can note that Gonzalez got a lot of help from unexpected sources, as Goodwin and McLemore weren't exactly renowned for their on-base skills prior to last year. In fact, the leadoff trio for Texas has a composite career OBP of .357 - respectable, but no more than league average.

Ramirez is preceded this year by the All-Star trio of Lofton, Vizquel and Alomar, a much more potent attack than the Texas trio. Alomar and Lofton, in particular, are both excellent on-base guys, and are excelling particularly well at it this year. Despite the better numbers, though, Ramirez has identical numbers to Gonzalez last year for plate appearances with runners on - 55% of the time. Of the remaining 45% of at bats, about half of them have come while leading off an inning (again identical to Gonzalez last year.)

My conclusion from all of this data is that Ramirez actually has a better chance of closing in on Hack Wilson and Lou Gehrig than Gonzalez had last year. He has more reliable guys ahead of him who aren't likely to slump as dramatically as did McLemore. Besides, Ramirez is a nicer guy than Gonzalez (well, who isn't?), so I can root for him to keep bashing out those ribbies.

And then watch the Tribe crash and burn in the post-season...

about the author

Dave Paisley is currently working on a new statistic to measure fans' consumption of beer (Beer Batted In.) Write and tell him that the guy who pours the beer is just as important as the guy that drinks it at drdjp@strikthree.com.