So Da Box likes Rios as the '08 Jay home run leader. Who leads the 2008 Jays in RBI? (2007 total shown)
| Thomas (95) |  32 (22.07%) |
| Rios (85) | 30 (20.69%) |
| Wells (80) | 63 (43.45%) |
| Hill (78) | 1 (0.69%) |
| Stairs (64) | 0 (0.00%) |
| Glaus (62) | 13 (8.97%) |
| Zaun (52) | 4 (2.76%) |
| Lind (46) | 0 (0.00%) |
| Overbay (44) | 1 (0.69%) |
| Other (who?) | 1 (0.69%) |
145 votes | 12 featured comments
I don't see Wells or Rios leading in RBI's due to opportunity. Both will probably get a few games in the leadoff/#2 holes which will cut down on RBI chances.
Thomas looks like a lock to me as he'll be in the heart of the order, should be fairly healthy, and has both power and fly ball ability (sac flies) to help up the numbers. Glaus is my #2 choice but health is a bigger potential issue for him than Thomas.
Thomas looks like a lock to me as he'll be in the heart of the order, should be fairly healthy, and has both power and fly ball ability (sac flies) to help up the numbers. Glaus is my #2 choice but health is a bigger potential issue for him than Thomas.
I know, RBI is a stat that can be ripped in many ways as not really indicative of production, but I just glanced back through Blue Jay leaders and found that Thomas' team-leading 95 last season was the lowest team-leading total for the Jays since George Bell knocked in 95 in 1985 -- 22 years ago! (To be fair, that doesn't include 1994-95, which weren't full seasons on the schedule -- but even in '94, Joe Carter knocked in 103! It seems unlikely that '95 leader Ed Sprague, who had 74, would have reached the century mark, though) ...
In fact, the Jays have not had a 100-RBI man in three of the last four seasons (leaders have been Thomas in 2006, Wells with 97 in 2005 and Delgado in 2004 with 99) ... the only other season dating back to '85 in which nobody reached 100 was 1988, when Bell -- again -- knocked in 97.
Just jumped off the page(screen) at me ...
Frank Thomas will be 40 in May. I wish him good health, but projecting it is not something I would do. If you take 10 great hitters at age 40, no more than two of them will play a full season. Stan the Man didn't. Ted Williams didn't. Barry Bonds didn't. Eddie Murray didn't. Dave Winfield did.
Little aches and pains can put a 40 year old out for a month.
Little aches and pains can put a 40 year old out for a month.
Most of these men were not fortunate enough to DH though. The one on your list who was healthy, Winfield, did get his ABs at DH that year. If Frank stays out of trouble like he did last year, good health is not unlikely for him next year.
Actually, Mike, I looked it up to make sure I wasn't misremembering, and Murray played 150+ games at age 40. But as the ensuing comment supports, nearly all of them were as a DH.
That said, I'd be surprised if Thomas played 120 games in 2008, either way.
I'm the 'other' vote, and my vote is for 'RBIs are a dumb stat'. Just about anybody on this list could lead the jays in RBIs if Gibbons makes it happen, especially amongst the first six of 'em.
Why is it a dumb stat it shows the overall production of a player considering where they are in the order. It also shows how clutch a player. Say you have a player with 45 homeruns and 110 rbi and a player with 25 homeruns and the same amount of rbi both playing on decent teams whose worth more? You could say they just did it a different way and If you put them on better teams they would obviously drive in more runs, but it is not a worthless stat.
No, it shows the overall production of the player, given:
1. how good the players ahead of them (mostly) in the order are,
2. luck
3. a bunch of park-related effects.
"Clutch" remains almost entirely luck, and there are better ways to measure it. RBIs also have a rather low year-over-year correlation: in fact, you can predict a season's RBI totals better using other stats than you can using RBIs (I believe this is a TangoTiger or MGL study).
1. how good the players ahead of them (mostly) in the order are,
2. luck
3. a bunch of park-related effects.
"Clutch" remains almost entirely luck, and there are better ways to measure it. RBIs also have a rather low year-over-year correlation: in fact, you can predict a season's RBI totals better using other stats than you can using RBIs (I believe this is a TangoTiger or MGL study).
I can't say that I understand this devaluation of the RBI statistic either.
When talking about the number of home runs Joe Bloe Home Run Hitter might hit in a given season, you would hear about factors like
1. how good the players behind him in the order are (so that he'll see good pitches)
2. how good the players ahead of him in the order are (so that the pitcher will lose a bit of focus with men on base)
3. a bunch of park-related effects
4. steroids, and
5. luck (never know which winds might blow at the right moment, bat might crack, pesky outfielder hauling your drive back into play on consecutive nights)
All of which may increase or decrease said hitter's home run total by 10, 20 maybe even 30. What's the year-over-year correlation for home runs supposed to be? Some players, I imagine, have distinctly different consistencies in their stats for both HR and RBI.
Does the RBI/game for any given player, across many seasons, look so much different than the HR/game? Is the RBI not a good performance statistic while HRs are, or are they both poor for the same reasons?
When talking about the number of home runs Joe Bloe Home Run Hitter might hit in a given season, you would hear about factors like
1. how good the players behind him in the order are (so that he'll see good pitches)
2. how good the players ahead of him in the order are (so that the pitcher will lose a bit of focus with men on base)
3. a bunch of park-related effects
4. steroids, and
5. luck (never know which winds might blow at the right moment, bat might crack, pesky outfielder hauling your drive back into play on consecutive nights)
All of which may increase or decrease said hitter's home run total by 10, 20 maybe even 30. What's the year-over-year correlation for home runs supposed to be? Some players, I imagine, have distinctly different consistencies in their stats for both HR and RBI.
Does the RBI/game for any given player, across many seasons, look so much different than the HR/game? Is the RBI not a good performance statistic while HRs are, or are they both poor for the same reasons?
Hill. He'll play every day and enjoy the luxury of having two (big slow) guys on base for him all season long. If he breaks the 20-homer mark and keeps a reasonably high doubles total, he's got a good shot.
Yes, HR aren't a perfect measure of how good a slugger someone is. If you were looking at free agents, just picking the one with the most HR as the best player to hire is neglecting a lot of factors: park factors being the most important, and league adjustment also being important at various points of history (right now, for instance).
But they're at least predictable in a useful fashion, and are a not-bad measure of the quality of a hitter. HR, HR/Fly and so on correlate very well year over year, especially if you control for park (which of course doesn't change for most hitters in most offseasons, so this control doesn't actually affect most hitters). Hitting homeruns is, generally, a repeatable skill, Brady Anderson notwithstanding. Yes, some hitters steroid themselves to the gills, but they probably do that year over year.
Regarding your first two points, it's been shown that except in very exceptional circumstances (Barry Bonds), "protection" is almost irrelevant. I believe that pitching from the stretch does hurt a pitcher a bit, but I forget exactly how large that correction is, and how much it has to do with 'concern' for the runner vs the simple alteration of the pitcher's mechanics.
RBIs, on the other hand, are largely a function of the [i]other[/i] hitters on a team. Basically all the useful information contained in RBIs is contained in, say, the BA/OBP/SLG trifecta of stats, but with significantly less noise, and as tt has been shown that 'clutchness' is mathematically indistinguishable from noise any way you cut it, RBI don't really, in my mind, have any redeeming features.
I'm sure one could do a pantsload of corrections to the RBI figure to get an 'expected' or 'corrected' RBI figure, but I think you'd more-or-less neglect the [i]actual[/i] RBI figure in doing so, depending on exactly what you're trying to correct for.
To answer your last question, I believe that HR (/game, say) correlates quite well year over year, demonstrating that it's generally a repeatable skill, especially if you control for age and park. RBI, on the other hand, is much less so, because of the number of external factors that go into it. RBIs are an especially poor stat to evaluate players relative to one another, because the contexts are so different: thus making the stat very unhelpful for evaluating free agents a team should go after, or if this player or that player deserves to win the MVP.
Cool?
But they're at least predictable in a useful fashion, and are a not-bad measure of the quality of a hitter. HR, HR/Fly and so on correlate very well year over year, especially if you control for park (which of course doesn't change for most hitters in most offseasons, so this control doesn't actually affect most hitters). Hitting homeruns is, generally, a repeatable skill, Brady Anderson notwithstanding. Yes, some hitters steroid themselves to the gills, but they probably do that year over year.
Regarding your first two points, it's been shown that except in very exceptional circumstances (Barry Bonds), "protection" is almost irrelevant. I believe that pitching from the stretch does hurt a pitcher a bit, but I forget exactly how large that correction is, and how much it has to do with 'concern' for the runner vs the simple alteration of the pitcher's mechanics.
RBIs, on the other hand, are largely a function of the [i]other[/i] hitters on a team. Basically all the useful information contained in RBIs is contained in, say, the BA/OBP/SLG trifecta of stats, but with significantly less noise, and as tt has been shown that 'clutchness' is mathematically indistinguishable from noise any way you cut it, RBI don't really, in my mind, have any redeeming features.
I'm sure one could do a pantsload of corrections to the RBI figure to get an 'expected' or 'corrected' RBI figure, but I think you'd more-or-less neglect the [i]actual[/i] RBI figure in doing so, depending on exactly what you're trying to correct for.
To answer your last question, I believe that HR (/game, say) correlates quite well year over year, demonstrating that it's generally a repeatable skill, especially if you control for age and park. RBI, on the other hand, is much less so, because of the number of external factors that go into it. RBIs are an especially poor stat to evaluate players relative to one another, because the contexts are so different: thus making the stat very unhelpful for evaluating free agents a team should go after, or if this player or that player deserves to win the MVP.
Cool?
I agree with how hard it is to compare players from different teams due to all the factors but I stil believe it's a great stat.