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Blue Jays Discussion: Everyone's hurt, but some are starting to make returns

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The Nemesis said:
RBIs are a bad stat because they have little evaluative or predictive value. They don't truly tell you much about what the player did considering there's little that separates a hit that garners RBIs vs one that doesn't other than things outside the batter's control. On a game-by-game basis you're better off just qualitatively evaluating someone's plate appearances or using straight up hits or walks or whatnot. On a seasonal basis you're going to get more out of HR, OBP/OPS, wRC+ or the like.

Small sample issues, but let's just look at the year-to-date league results.

Mike Trout is... Mike Trout. The best hitter in baseball. Vlad is in or near the top 5 in most decent broadly evaluative offensive stats at the moment.

Where are they on the RBI leaderboard? In the 40s, tied with several other players with 12 apiece. Kyle Tucker in Houston, who's currently batting a sterling .181 has more RBIs than either of them. Travis Shaw has more. Trey Mancini has more and he's struggling to stay above the Mendoza line and is overall hitting like a below-average player.

They also don't really tell you anything about a player that is concretely useful moving forward. Sure, most of the time high RBI totals correlate to "good player". But they can also go way out of whack with little surface explanation. It's how you get Joe Carter topping 100 RBI in 1997 while also being pretty much the worst regular hitter on the team outside of Benito "I'm a catcher so I don't really count" Santiago. Or 100+ RBI seasons from luminaries like Adam Lind, and Tony Batista.

I think people say RBIs are a junk stat because if you're less strident about it, that becomes an invitation to 'yeah but' excuse its shortcomings. The reality of RBIs is that while having racked up a lot of RBIs in a season is cool, there are better stats to look at when you want to answer the question of how well a guy did in a season. And yes, HRs might be one of them if we're presuming that the choice is "you get one stat and that's it." It's obviously not a great stat for overall offensive prowess, but it's more likely to be a reliable one than RBIs. It's easy to get into whatabout arguments like "well HRs are junk if you don't filter for pitch type or park dimensions or opposing pitcher fly ball rates or whatever" but the point isn't that RBIs have potentially obscuring drill-down splits and quirks. It's that holding all other things equal they're more likely to be faulty than another stat like HRs.

If you can acknowledge that pitcher wins are too noisy and messy to be useful as an evaluative tool for pitchers, the case against RBIs is largely the same when it comes to hitters.
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Well said Nem. I will add one other point. Because RBI’s are reliant on what the people hitting ahead of you are able to as well. Like the lead off hitter is usually your best player at getting on base. He also by default has what is usually statistically the worst hitters hitting in front of him. This by default lowers his chances of getting said rbi. Does that make him an inferior player because the guys hitting immediately after him for at least the next three slots have much better chances for rbi success. RBI’s are a fun but useless stat IMO
 
It's actually nuts how big of a turnaround their bullpen has made in the last year.

Last year it was everyone excepting the inveitable of a Yamaguchi or Dolis meltdown or the usual "Montoyo refuses to accept Gaviglio sucks" episode. Now they've got guys in there that are reliable and thats with a few guys missing on top of it.

Can't wait to see what this team looks like once Teoscar and Springer are good to go.
 
BlueForever75 said:
Are Springer and Hernandez due back this week?

That would be a great add to our lineup.
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Hernandez played in a rehab game yesterday and they were hoping Springer would debut during this next home stand so you would have to think probably by next week both guys are in the lineup.

Edit: today is apparently the day for Springer
 
TheBeastCoast said:
I really don't think his issue is arm strength at all honestly. He clearly has more arm then Biggio anyway. You know Semien can play short and that Biggio is decent at 2nd. I will take the gamble on Bo being a better 3B then he is a shortstop.
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No doubt,It’s his arm.
 
TheBeastCoast said:
Posting it everyday doesn't make people think you are smart or something lol
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Smart was wanting to trade Cavan Biggio who’s overrated. Knowing Kris Bryant would bounce back doesn’t make me smart. Anyone with a working brain saw that coming
 
dredeye said:
Well said Nem. I will add one other point. Because RBI’s are reliant on what the people hitting ahead of you are able to as well. Like the lead off hitter is usually your best player at getting on base. He also by default has what is usually statistically the worst hitters hitting in front of him. This by default lowers his chances of getting said rbi. Does that make him an inferior player because the guys hitting immediately after him for at least the next three slots have much better chances for rbi success. RBI’s are a fun but useless stat IMO
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I'm an old codger but I was wondering if there's a stat for RBI's as a percentage of 'opportunity'.. i.e. percentage of RBI's in relation to runners on 2nd and 3rd?...So for example if you came up 320 times a year with runners on 2nd and/or 3rd and drove in 80 runs in those situations you'd get a 25% rating. I'm sure number of outs in those situations would come into play as it's obviously easier to drive in a runner from 3rd with less than 2 outs but I'm sure the stats gurus could come up with some sort of formula...Any credence to something along those lines?
 
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Northernguy10 said:
I'm an old codger but I was wondering if there's a stat for RBI's as a percentage of 'opportunity'.. i.e. percentage of RBI's in relation to runners on 2nd and 3rd?...So for example if you came up 320 times a year with runners on 2nd and/or 3rd and drove in 80 runs in those situations you'd get a 25% rating. I'm sure number of outs in those situations would come into play as it's obviously easier to drive in a runner from 3rd with less than 2 outs but I'm sure the stats gurus could come up with some sort of formula...Any credence to something along those lines?
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That would be an interesting stat line to go through for sure. However I’ve never heard of one
 
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