Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
The only way that is true is if the player drives in a lot of runs by hitting poorly with RISP. A player with hits his average with RISP and high leverage situations has earned his RBIs.
The thing that I don't get is people like him that over value walks. The only way to drive in a run with a walk is if the bases are loaded. In general for a star player, drawing a walk is a bad thing. It is his job to drive in runs, not pass his responsibility on to a lesser player. A player who drives in more runs by getting hits and walking less is far more value than the guy with a high OBP, but fewer RBIs, assuming equal situations with RISP.
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With all due respect, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jimmy Foxx, Ralph Kiner, Joe Morgan, Mickey Mantle, and Lou Gehrig would all disagree with you. They all posted numerous 100+ runs scored seasons, due to terrific OBP's (due to both hits and walks) plus pure power (Kiner had a fantastic OBP of .398, despite just a .279 lifetime BA, due to his tremendous amount of walks drawn. That resulted in six 100+ runs scored seasons before back injuries took hold, despite the fact that he was nowhere near fast). See also Mike Trout for a modern example of this type of player, with a tremendous OBP (due both to his BA and an ability to draw a ton of walks) plus power. Through history, this has been the best combination for run production by far. I haven't checked it, but would be willing to bet that Ruth and Williams, due not only to their high BA's but also their tremendous propensity for drawing walks, producing lifetime OBP's of .464 and .482 respectively, scored the highest number of runs in history per plate appearance. Per Keith Law, who has quite a background in analytics, on-base % plus slugging (OPS, which is a gross over-simplification of James' runs created formula, and less accurate) has a 92% correlation to runs scored. Simply put, the team which puts more runners on base, whether by hit or walk, and is capable of driving them in, scores more runs. RBI's, while continuing to be a valuable statistic to a far greater extent than the enormously egotistical Brian Kenny would acknowledge, are indeed context dependent, both on the conditions under which the game was played during different eras (example: in the '20's and early '30's, LEAGUE BATTING AVERAGES hovered around .280 all the way up to a high of .301 in the NL in 1930. Why? smaller parks with regard to both the outfield fences and foul territory, and virtually no sliders, a pitch which did not come into prominence until after WWII), and the ability of the players batting ahead of the particular hitter of concern to get on base. Getting back to the slider, Ted Williams called it the one single pitch which did the most to reduce batting averages after the 2nd World War, and had the charts to prove it. Compare, for example, Joe D's hitting pre and post WWII. It wasn't just age that made the difference--Williams also stated that Joe had trouble with the slider, and his Red Sox would have played DiMag's Yankees 22X per year. He oughta know! For those who may not know, a slider leaves the pitcher's hand exactly the same way as his fastball does, and looks like one until it breaks. If you can't spot and react fast enough to the small circle about which it is spinning in time, you are very susceptible to looking like a total fool swinging at a pitch that starts out looking like a strike middle-out, but ends up down and away, in the dirt. The curve ball, on the other hand, has traditionally had a slight arc upwards from the instant the pitcher releases it.
The change in playing conditions through different eras affected the ability to score runs, which is why the best players of the '20's and early '30's drove in more runs than those playing the bulk of their careers after WWII. Runs were significantly easier to score then simply because more runners were on base. Which is why you can't simply count up RBI's and equate them to any individual player's ability to produce runs. See Bill James' discussion of Mantle versus DiMaggio concerning run production in James' Historical Baseball Abstracts. While DiMaggio had higher RBI seasons, Mantle created substantially more runs as against the league average player during their respective times because of the greater ease in scoring runs during DiMag's time, PLUS Mantle's far superior ability to draw walks and consequently substantially higher OBP, despite a career BA 27 points lower.
Which is why, as a matter of interest, Bill Terry's 1930 campaign (23 HR's, .401 BA) does not differ significantly in era-independent run production value from that of Carl Yaz's 1968 season of .301 with 23 HR's. Terry topped the entire NL average by approximately 33%, while Yaz (facing sliders which Terry virtually never saw) topped the AL average by about 31%.
As to the value of walks in particular, they can readily be seen to often be of great value even when the recipient thereof neither scores nor drives in a run. Example: Two outs, man on first, and Mark McGwire (who drew an enormous number of walks!) at bat. McGwire doesn't get a hit, but doesn't make an out either. Instead, he draws one of his many walks, moving the man on first to second. The next batter lines one to right center, scoring the player initially on first base before McGwire came to bat. McGwire got neither a run scored nor an RBI on the play, YET THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO RUN SCORED HAD HE MADE AN OUT RATHER THAN WALKING. The walk was indisputably fundamental in creating that run. This kind of event occurs many, many times during the course of any team's season.
We've been far beyond simply counting numbers to accurately evaluate players of different eras whose careers were played under different conditions since James' Baseball abstracts of the'80's.
While we may disagree, you have, as always as a valuable contributor in this forum, my highest regards,
Larry