Glaus-ing Over Clutch Hitting

Troy Glaus had a hit and an RBI in five attempts during a 4-1 Atlanta win over Philly today. So he's clutch, right? After all, he got a hit with runners on base in a close game. This is why we revere RBIs; they denote an ability to drive in runs.

Except, as copious research has demonstrated, there's virtually no relationship between RBIs and "hitting in the clutch," almost regardless of how you define it.

RBIs correlate quite highly with RBI opportunities, i.e., players with lots of RBIs tend to bat with lots of guys on base -- in fact, in scoring position. Anytime you see two players with similar production but disparate RBI totals, check your knee-jerk assumption of clutchness at the door and assume instead that one player had many more chances to drive in runs than the other.

Which is how Glaus hooked and reeled in an RBI today. In his five trips to the plate, the bases were stuffed with 11 baserunners -- bases juiced once and two on each of the other four occasions. Glaus whiffed twice and left nine men on base until the ninth, when his shallow outfield poof dropped in and scored a runner from third.

Was Glaus "clutch?" Ha! He almost single-handedly ran the Braves' aground, overcoming the consistent achievements of his fellow batsmen, like Chipper Jones. Jones reached base four out of five trips to the plate, but collected no RBIs. Perhaps he wasn't "clutch,", or perhaps he did exactly what he was supposed to do, and just had fewer opportunities. He stranded a single runner all game.

Ryan Howard, whose gargantuan contract rests in part on his enviable annual RBI totals, left four runners on base in the same game. Batting in that lineup, in the number four position, in that ballpark, with that power, is a perfect RBI storm. Howard can strand four runners here and there, because there will be four more to knock in on other nights.

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Streaking on the Diamond

As Goobers' third baseman Dickie Sunog y Mino steps to the plate, play-by-play announcer J.P. Bagel intones that the switch-hitting veteran has opened the season by singling on a 2-2 pitch in each of his first nine games. "Hmmm," you think.

Next up, left fielder Anders Golland. Color analyst Alex Nobelprize notes that the D.C. native knocked a single in his first game, a double in his next, a triple in his third, a homer in his fourth, and then repeated the pattern in his next four games. No one else has ever started a season that way, he adds. "Wow, that's interesting," you say to yourself.

Batting third is Ray Rothenberg, the rookie catcher. Bagel reminds his listeners that the young backstop has walked and scored in each game so far this season. "That's good," you figure.

It's easy to see that each of these occurrences is more statistical quirk than accomplishment. Even in the case of the number two hitter, while six extra base hits in eight games is laudable, accumulating them in a particular pattern is random and not particularly noteworthy. With respect to the third batter, walking is a good outcome that helps lead to a score, but the combined result generally requires significant contributions from teammates.

It's been encouraging therefore, that the baseball media has given as scant attention to Jorge Cantu's nine game streak of hitting safely and knocking in a run as political analysts give to the actual issues. Maybe it was the relatively short duration of the streak that prevented a critical mass of hype from building, but then again, maybe it was the recognition that a nine-game hitting streak isn't unusual and an RBI is a team event. Pushing across a run with a base hit requires no less cooperation from others as scoring after a walk does. 

In fact, a hitting streak is a kind of hollow accomplishment that is two parts luck for every one part skill. The reasons are obvious if you're a baseball fan; it's worth mentioning that a player who is intentionally walked three times and lays down a critical sac bunt in his other plate appearance is penalized, but a guy who goes one-for-five on a squibbler past the mound keeps the streak alive. 

For some reason, ordinary fans and media seem to understand the randomness of the no-hitter, hitting for the cycle and Cantu's streak. It seems to me a baby step to understanding the semi-randomness of RBIs.

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RBIculous

"Isn't a hitter's role to knock in runs?" asked Paul from Oakland, defending Ryan Howard's MVP candidacy after last season.

The AP writeup of yesterday's Rangers' 3-0 whitewashing of the Angels supports this view. In a two-sentence summary it notes that David Murphy's sacrifice fly helped Texas extend a seven-game winning streak.

The Texas left-fielder certainly broke a scoreless tie in the 7th inning with his fly ball. For that, the record books will wink at the out he produced. That's probably a bit of charity in the first place. I'm a lot more impressed with the Hank Blalock double that made the run possible. According to Paul and the summary writer, it's the RBI that counts.

Love of the RBI is derived from the quaint notion that this statistic probably came the closest to approximating who got the big hit in the key situation the most. After a few years of use, we stopped paying attention to the modifiers and simply equated RBI with clutch hitting.

In fact, modern analysis has shown this to be utter nonsense. RBIs occur at the intersection of opportunity and performance -- performance that's easily calculable in other, better, ways. David Murphy got credit for an RBI when all he did was avoid making a bad out.

By the way, in the 8th inning, Omar Vizquel tripled and scored the almost-as-important second run. That second run, whose existance David Murphy made less likely when he failed to reach base safely, increased the Rangers' chances of winning about half as much as the first. That's why Hank and Omar deserve the bulk of the offensive credit (granting in advance that Scott Feldman and a triumverate of relievers really won the game) and not David Murphy, RBI not withstanding.

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A Steaming Pile of RBIs: #4 In A Series

Which player had a better year with the stick in 1997?

Joe Carter , 102 RBI
Jim Edmonds, 80 RBI

If you're a baseball writer, or a Phillies fan from Oakland, you'll take Carter's 102 runs driven in because the job of a batter is to knock in runs. Whenever you're in the company of baseball writers, get out the hip waders because you're in a big, steaming pile of buffalo poo.

It's not that Carter was a disaster for the Blue Jays that year. Oh wait, yes it is. In fact, with Carter's excerable .284 on base percentage, the BJs could have saved millions and produced more runs by replacing their aging slugger with whatever detritus was hanging around Triple-A. With just 40 walks and 12 double plays grounded into, Carter consumed 474 precious outs and graded out under AAA replacement level.

So how did he accumulate 102 RBI? Among those many occasions when his teammates filled up the bases for him, he smacked 55 extra base hits. Because RBIs are a team event -- you can't knock in a runner who's not there -- they don't reflect quality as much as opportunity.

Okay, hypothetical Oakland resident, I hear your objections: 1. You can knock in a runner who's not there with a home run. 2. RBIs show that you come through in the clutch.

Let me pause briefly on item #2 and simply say we've returned to the big pile of buffalo poo. Sabermetric studies comparing players of roughly equal production (on base plus slugging) but wildly differing RBI totals have found that RBI opportunities account for nearly the entire explanation and RBI efficiency explains somewhere between nothing and a negligible amount.

As for the self-made RBI -- the dinger -- even an anti-social, contrarian stathead geek will acknowledge that a home run is the double-fudge brownie ice cream, the Anne Hathaway, the royal flush, of every at bat. But we have other ways to account for it without subjecting the analysis of individual players to the bias of their teammates' success or failure. That's why my cat is named Tater, not Ribbie.

(As for Jim Edmonds, his .368/.500 performance added roughly four wins to the Angels even before accounting for the yawning chasm between his defense in the toughest outfield position versus Carter's weak glovework in the easiest. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Edmonds was twice the player Joe Carter was that year.)

The moral of the story is that we value RBIs because we count them, and we count RBIs mainly because we grew up counting them. But we grew up watching black and white TVs, listening to vinyl records and believing that we could feed the poor by taxing the rich into oblivion. It's time to update our understanding of the game.