GopherPoke
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2015
- Messages
- 477
- Reaction score
- 528
- Points
- 93
I don't disagree for the most part on what you're saying. I do think it needs to be considered simply due to the fact that hitters are approached, and pitched to entirely different depending on if there are runners on base and where those runners might be. How you hit in those situations does matter. It is, arguably, harder to hit when runners are on base. By the way, I think this is one of the top reasons that baseball is enjoyable to watch. When you know more about what is going on behind the curtain, it is a better watch. Baseball has a lot of chess going on throughout a game. All my opinion.Scoring runs and driving in runs obviously are helpful in winning games (duh), but evaluating a player's ability by looking at his RBI total is highly flawed, because it is determined by so many external factors like how often guys are on base in front of you, where you hit in the order, etc.
If a guy over the course of a season has 300 guys on base in his at bats, and drives in 100 runs, and another guy only has 200 on base but drives in 85, it would be unfair to give player #1 more credit.
Long story short, runs matter, but RBI is a bad comparative statistic.