The Unicorn of Baseball Facts

You're reading today that Alex Rodriguez has become the second player in baseball history to 2,000 RBIs, after Hank Aaron.

Yay him.

Except, this is abject nonsense and everyone disseminating this "fact" knows it.

The lords of baseball established the RBI as an official stat in 1920. Prior to that, it was not tracked. But it's not like it didn't exist. Uranus existed before 1781 even though humans didn't know it.

From 1920 onward, Babe Ruth drove 1,993 runners home, including himself nearly 700 times. But he began driving in runs before that.

In 1919, his first as an everyday player, he smashed a record 29 home runs. So without any calculating, we know that Ruth passed the 2,000 RBI mark (1,993 + 29). He also popped 11 out the year before as a pitcher/outfielder.

It strains credulity to think that Ruth didn't knock in many more than 29 runs that year. He batted .322 with 34 doubles, 12 triples, 64 singles and 101 walks for the BoSox.

Reviewing the boxscores of every game in which the Sultan swatted prior to 1920, Baseball Reference estimates he drove home another 221 beyond those officially tallied, for 2,214 in total.

Now maybe the intern at Baseball Reference was smoking dope the week he did the calculations. Let's say he was seeing double and vastly over-estimated the Bambino's RBI total. What's the difference? He's well over 2,000 by any standard.

We can say there is uncertainty about Ruth's lifetime RBI count. He's around 2,214, give or take a handful. But he unquestionably accounted for 2,000+ runs. We know that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Then why does the world of baseball journalism assert and repeat a piece of information that it knows, not withstanding any other uncertainty, is wrong. False. A lie. Mis-information. Stupidity.

You know my theory: because baseball "journalism" and stupidity go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or really like unicorns and horns. Because like baseball journalism, a unicorn is a figment of our imagination.

Best & Worst New Metrics Part III: OPS

The days of explaining why batting average, home runs and RBIs don't adequately capture an everyday player's performance are long gone. Even the retrogrades who cling tenaciously to the old numbers recognize in their hearts why on-base percentage and slugging percentage are more comprehensive and why RBIs don't tell a useful story.

Adding on base and slugging gave us OPS, the shorthand statistic of choice to seamheads in the seamheady early days of the sabremetric movement. But analysts cannot live by OPS alone; indeed, OPS and its close relations, like OPS+, now long in the tooth, have become something of an anachronism, rarely used to make anything but the crudest point. 

The reason is simple: not all OPS is equal. Seamheads have long known that OBP is more important than slugging, about 20% more when talking about run creation. So simply adding the two numbers devalues on-base percentage.

OPS is not park-adjusted, position-adjusted or competition-adjusted. The narrative it creates doesn't describe whether a batter hits same-handed pitchers or has to be platooned. It's also largely irrelevant when discussing leadoff hitters, whose OBP is invaluable and whose slugging is not very valuable at all.

OPS was good to the analysis community in its prime, but has lost a step and is now little more than a veteran presence off the bench, backing up starters TAv, WAR/WARP and their ilk. We thank OPS for its contributions, particularly for introducing fans to better ways to measure players. and wish it the best of luck in its future endeavors.

A Kick In the Shin: The Most Under-rated Player in Baseball

He's a leadoff hitter with a .417 OBP (second in the NL) and plenty of pop too -- 14 homers and 26 doubles/triples. His OPS of .883 is 40% better than average and 10th best in the league. He gets on base even more often -- half the time -- in high leverage situations, like late in close games. 

He's worth four wins to his team at the plate, fifth in the league, and staffs the critical center field position. Not surprisingly, he's third in the league in runs scored, thanks also to a great number three hitter and good cleanup guy.

He's no flash-in-the-pan either: during his nine year career, he's hit .289/.387/.465, 33% above average.

And yet, he wasn't even seriously considered for the All-Star team and isn't on anyone's MVP preview list. You probably don't know anything about him. Shin-soo Choo may be the most under-rated player in Major League Baseball.

It may be that the low-key Korean native has suffered an identity crisis from playing in Cleveland and Cincinnati, two Ohio cities with small Korean populations. It could be that his skills don't light up the BA-HR-RBI stat meter that uneducated baseball fans still use. It could be that teammates like superstar Joey Votto and flashy Brandon Phillips have overshadowed him.

Whatever the reason, Choo would have to be on your short list of MVP candidates so far, along with Votto, David Wright, Buster Posey, Carlos Gonzalez, Andrew McCutcheon, Matt Carpenter, Yadier Molina and Carlos Gomez.

It's worth noting that nowhere near that list is Phillips, the walking highlight reel powered by joie de vivre and accompanied by a decent stick. But the suggestion by an MLB-employed "analyst" (who shall remain nameless to spare him further embarrassment) that Phillips is the NL MVP so far because of his league-leading RBI total is so utterly out-of-touch that he should be relieved of duties based on that one statement alone. (Ironically, the offending analyst was a reliever when he played ball.)

Phillips led the league in RBIs -- he doesn't anymore -- because Choo and Votto occupy the basepaths before him. Phillips himself is hitting just .261/.313/.403, which, though highly respectable for a second baseman, is below average overall. Not only does he enjoy the most RBI opportunities in the league by a wide margin, he also benefits disproportionately from runners in scoring position. Phillips is a laudable sixth in the league in converting those opportunities, but that's hardly MVP material. He's been worth about a win-and-a-half to the Reds, small potatoes compared to Choo.

It's tempting determine player value by this method:
1. Find an everyday performer on a good team with a high batting average and big home run totals
2. Season with steals and fielding
3. Factor in his position.

That would make us feel like we'd covered the bases. You're likely to find a good player that way, but our tools are so much more refined and thoughtful, and easily available. They help us determine that a quiet guy like Shin-soo Choo is far more valuable than his tweeting, fun-king teammate, Brandon Phillips.