Minnesota Twins: What Has Happened to Justin Morneau's Power?

[Guest USAFChief]

Baseball Prospectus took all the suspense out of (the RBI) debate a decade ago.

 

 

That seems to me an opinion, not a fact.

[old nurse]

At the very least I should have had an apostrophe, you're right. RBI's? R'sBI? I don't know which is correct when you're using an acronym.

 

This RBI discussion has been waged several times so I made the assumption that you would know the arguments at this point. Mea Culpa. All that RBI measures is how many runners you plated, not how efficient (ie clutch) you were at doing so. There are better stats to measure efficiency including one you mentioned in your own post, RISP, which directly measure how efficient a hitter is when it counts.

 

RBI on the other hand are a function of two things. First it is dependent on having someone on base in front of you, so you could be the best hitter in the world but if people are rarely on in front of you, no RBI. Or you could be a very bad hitter but if there are always guys on when you come to the plate your RBI total will be large just because of the number of opportunities. The second factor is how "clutch" a hitter is but because the first factor is so important in deriving an RBI it is impossible to tell "clutchiness" from the RBI stat.

 

Here is a case in point. Morneau vs. Mauer career stats with RISP:

[TABLE=width: 500]

[/TD]

[TD]RBI

OPS

Opportunities

Morneau

578

.866

1544

Mauer

494

.953

1336

[/TABLE]

 

As you can see Joe has actually been more "clutch" with RISP but Morneau has more RBI's because he's had more opportunities. In reality because Mauer, with his ridiculous .406 OBP, has always hit in front of Morneau, Morneau ends up with more RBI's.

rbi to opportunity is nearly identical in your numbers. They would be equally "clutch" in terms of getting runners in. A higher OPS would probably lead you to Mauer scoring more runs than Morneau. Then there would be the debate that Mauer scores more runs because he had Morneau behind him while Morneau had what for clutch behind him?

[kab21]

rbi to opportunity is nearly identical in your numbers. They would be equally "clutch" in terms of getting runners in. A higher OPS would probably lead you to Mauer scoring more runs than Morneau. Then there would be the debate that Mauer scores more runs because he had Morneau behind him while Morneau had what for clutch behind him?

 

The reason that RBI to opportunity is nearly identical despite Mauer being the better hitter with RISP is that Morneau hit a lot more HR's and gets an RBI for hitting himself in.

 

But really RBI's are meaningless. A hitter on the Yankees will get more RBI's. A cleanup hitter will have more RBI's than a #2 hitter.

[Aaron Cross]

Physically, there's nothing to him. Skin and bones. I think he's sick. Either that or he quit pumping iron and his body has just shriveled up. He used to be a physical specimen.

[darin617]

Part 2

Minnesota Twins: What Has Happened to Joe Mauer's Power? Oh yeah noboby asks what happened to his power after he hit 28 HR in 2009. 2010-2013 current stats Mauer has 28 HR... I guess it's Target Field's fault even though only half the games are played there and the rest on the road.

[Turd Furgeson]

Does the team that scores the most runs still win?

 

Yes, the TEAM that scores the most runs, wins.

[Guest USAFChief]

Yes, the TEAM that scores the most runs, wins.

 

I know you're a Twins fan so the concept of a hitter actually driving in a run is somewhat rare, but believe it or not, other teams don't depend on an error, a WP, a ground ball to the right side and balk to score a run.

[Turd Furgeson]

I know you're a Twins fan so the concept of a hitter actually driving in a run is somewhat rare, but believe it or not, other teams don't depend on an error, a WP, a ground ball to the right side and balk to score a run.

 

RISP will tell me how good a player is in clutch situations. RBI relies far too much on team performance.