RBI Opportunites report

by shoewizard on May 22, 2008 5:11 PM EDT

Time for the first annual update of the D backs RBI Opportunities.

For those unfamiliar with this report, it is available to subscribers only at Baseball Prospectus. What this report does is simply add up how many runners have been on base during a players at bats, and see how many of them the player has driven in. (Not including himself should he hit a homer)

The "OBI"% is simply the percentage of others batted in, or the % of runners on base a hitter batted in. I find this stat to be a good proxy in place of where you might use BA W/RISP, because that stat has the same inherent flaws as batting avg....all hits count the same.

An infield hit with a runner on second that does not score the run gets the same credit as a bases loaded triple........I think you see the point

For some additional context:

Among all MLB players with a minimum of 120 Plate Appearances, Jackson ranks second behind only Josh Hamilton, who has a 27.4% rate.

Jackson led all D backs regulars in this category last year as well, with a 16. 9 % rate. (477 PA) That was second only to Tony Clark, who had a 17.6% rate, but of course only 245 PA's

Snyder, the next highest full time D Back player ranks 42'd in the majors

Eric Byrnes ranks 186th out of 227

SWEET!!

Player	PA	OBI	ROB	OBI%
Ojeda	59	10	32	31.3%
Jackson	172	28	114	24.6%
Snyder	129	19	106	17.9%
Hudson	161	20	113	17.7%
Reynolds	179	21	122	17.2%
Salazar	51	5	36	13.9%
Upton	185	15	111	13.5%
Burke	72	6	48	12.5%
Young	208	15	124	12.1%
Drew	170	13	108	12.0%
Byrnes	184	13	123	10.6%
Montero	44	3	36	8.3%

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ugh.....

my spelling…...LOL

Please put Eric Byrnes on the DL

by shoewizard on May 22, 2008 5:12 PM EDT reply actions

The puzzling player on this team remains CY

In 57 PA this year he has a .614 OPS with RISP – lower than even Byrnes .653 mark. In his previous seasons he’s had a .642 OPS in 143 PA.

The numbers should even out eventually, but you hope it happens sooner rather than later.

by dahlian on May 22, 2008 5:39 PM EDT reply actions

So this is saying Augie still has a chance at the HOF

or at the very least should be batting cleanup.

Reynolds is much higher than I would have guessed but Im guessing that is largely due to his hot start.

Good stuff

by Augie's Army on May 22, 2008 7:07 PM EDT reply actions

Snyder has really turned it around

since the start of the season—he was dreadful to begin with – but has really turned it on….

by dstorm on May 23, 2008 3:51 PM EDT reply actions

RBI Opps.

I agree that BA RISP can be misleading. But this stat is even worse. The biggest problem is that it doesn’t distinguish between RISP and runners on first (RO-1). In most cases a single will drive in a runner from second or third. It will almost never drive one in from first. Thus “success or failure” here depends heavily on where the runners happen to be located when the batter comes up. It also depends on the speed of the runners, the number of outs, etc. These are all factors completely outside the batter’s control.

Walks are another problem. It’s hard to drive in runners when you get walked (or at least pitched around) whenever you come up with runners on. Just ask Barry Bonds (if you can ever find him).

Sacrifices create a similar problem. Batters often asked to bunt will do poorly with this stat.

How can the stat be improved? Using AB’s instead of PA’s would solve the BB and SH problems, although you’d have to add SF’s to the AB’s.

The only way to deal with the main problem is to compute two separate OBI’s: RISP OBI vs. RO-1 OBI. Of course you may want to go one step further, splitting RISP OBI between RO-2 and RO-3. And you could make a case for splitting RO-3 by number of outs (2 or less). But at that point the data gets a little overwhelming.

Let’s stick with WPA. Not only does it tell us how often a batter takes advantage of RBI Opps., but it also indicates how important those RBI Opps. were to the outcome of the game.

by fjm235 on May 25, 2008 1:23 AM EDT reply actions

Actually BP has the report broken out

I just gave the overall % because I was too lazy to type out.

For example: The report shows Jackson has driven in 10% of the runners from first, 23.1% of the runners from second and 51.9% of the runners from 3rd. So that aspect of your concerns is pretty much addressed by the report in it’s original form.

For those with a BP subscription:

Please put Eric Byrnes on the DL

by shoewizard on May 25, 2008 4:19 AM EDT up reply actions