What RBIs Can Tell Us
“Hey I guess they’re right. Seniors citizens, while slow, and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose.” – Lloyd Christmas on the value of old people
RBIs are like Lloyd Christmas’ assessment of senior citizens. They are very limited, but if you think about them in the right light, they can still provide some value. They are not valuable predictors of future performance or accurate ways to describe a players past performance. RBIs are wholly dependent on people getting on base in front of the batter credited with them. That means they are something the hitter credited (or not credited) with the RBI cannot control. That’s why this year’s Blue Jay cleanup hitter Adam Lind (86 RBI) drives in more runs than leadoff hitter Yunel Escobar (48 RBI), despite Escobar’s far superior offensive season (higher OBP, wOBA). While RBIs may not be the best way of evaluating players' past performance or future value, they can serve a purpose as a descriptive stat. When taken as such, RBI can help tell the story of a single game. Knowing Chase Utley had 3 RBIs in the 7th inning of last night’s tie game (even if he hit a squibbler down the line), does more than saying he slugged .667 last night. I don’t see Win Probability Added making its way into the laurels of common vocabulary anytime soon either. RBIs don’t provide insight into a hitter’s true performance or ability, but they can provide some (albeit very limited) context into what happened on the field.
Comeback Player of the Year Award
Like core values and truths in post- enlightenment, western society; how we interpret the Comeback Player of the Year Award is a personal choice. Should it go to a player that is coming back from a major injury? Or should it go to a player coming back from a terrible year? My vote/interpretation goes to the latter. For the most part, players who that get hurt are expected to return to form and get back to their pre-injury level of performance. Players coming off of terrible years are a little more complicated. They are often seen as washed up or too old (Jim Thome), one time overachievers, or just not very good (Carlos Pena before 2007). These are the players I want to see winning comeback player of the year. Their stories are more interesting, and that’s what the Comeback Player Award is all about: the story. I don’t know why Brad Lidge couldn’t get his head right in 2006/2007 but however he went from frazzled late inning headcase to ace reliever is a much more compelling story than the guy who was good, blew out his arm, missed a year and came back to be the exact same player he was before (Chris Carpenter I’m looking at you...). You know how it goes with these interpretive awards: one man, one opinion.
Moneyball Movie
I’m going to spare you one more opinion on the apparently controversial Moneyball movie. What I do want to say is that we should try to remember that Moneyball is a movie, and shouldn’t be evaluated as anything more. Let’s not use it as an argument either for or against the use of statistical analysis in baseball. Enjoy the movie!
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Three very good points! In regards to Moneyball (excellent movie, and book!), part of the reason it's "controversial" is that no one really understands what "Moneyball" is.
ReplyDeleteEveryone just assumes it's something that poor teams use instead of scouting, when, in reality, it's a focus on statistics other than, say, RBI (wink wink) to more accurately rate a player's contributions to a team's success. Part of the reason that the Oakland A's never won a World Series using "Moneyball" techniques was that teams like Boston and New York caught on to what they were doing, and overpaid the same types of players Oakland was getting at a discount, thus pricing them out of the market.
But, that's my rant.
Great post, looking forward to following you through the playoffs.