Reexamining Clutch: MLB's Best Run Producer

by user Timothy Moreland(Bball3345)

I have been very busy at churning out articles today. If you missed my two earlier, Bball3345's Stream of Consciousness: August 4 and White Sox Starters: Examining the Fall, then please check them out. I promise they are good:)

Enough with the self-promoting, on to this article...

So, who has been the best player in 2006 at driving in runners? Most would probably say David Ortiz with his 105 RBIs. In order to find the answer, I took a trip over to Baseball Prospectus' stats page. From there, I plugged all 800 players' data on plate appearances with runners on and which base they were on. From this, I calculated that a runner from first scored 4.95% of the time, from second 15.80%, and from third 35.80%. These numbers made sense, the farther along the basepaths, the easier to score.

The next step was to multiply an individuals base situations by the average rate of scoring. For example, Ortiz has come to bat with a runner on first 199 times. This number would then be multiplied by 4.95%, as explained above, to produce 9.85. In other words, Ortiz would be expected to drive in approximately ten runners from first. Ortiz has actually driven in 20 runners, most likely due to his power. A weaker batter, such as Jeter, has driven in only 9, compared to his expected output of 8.415. As shown in the table below, Jeter holds a slight advantage at driving in runners from second (23.23% to 20.90%) and a drastic advantage at driving in runners from third (50.94% to 33.90%). Overall, Ortiz has driven in 68 runners, according to OBI which does not count scoring yourself on a HR as an RBI. Jeter has driven in 59 runners, only nine behind Ortiz.

The final column of the table displays how many extra runs have been driven in than expected. Jeter and Ortiz have both driven in 16 more runs than would be expected. Lance Berkman leads the pack by a sizeable distance. This can be explained by his lack of runners on base, but league-leading OBI%, or percentage of all baserunners driven in.

So, to answer the opening question, it appears as if Berkman has been the best player at driving in baserunners, followed far behind by Beltran. After Beltran, another large gap exists before a three-way tie.

2006

The next five were...Andruw Jones, Raul Ibanez, Bobby Abreu, Chase Utley, and Miguel Cabrera.

Here are some explanations for the chart:

PA_ROB: Plate apperances with runners on base

ROB: Total runners on base

OBI: Runners driven in (RBI - HR)

OBI%: Percentage of all runners driven in

R_1B%: Percentage of runners on first base driven in

R_2B%: Percentage of runners on second base driven in

R_3B%: Percentage of runners on third base driven in

XOBI%: Expected number of OBI

Again, all of these stats are compliments of Baseball Prospectus, except for XOBI% and the /- column.

Date

Fri 08/04/06, 12:30 pm EST

Davis21wylieMVP

1240 days ago

Score 1

Great work.

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Bball3345Draft Pick

1240 days ago

Score 1

Thanks, the magic of Microsoft Excel makes stuff like this so simple.

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I am a cpcpMajor Leaguer

1240 days ago

Score 0

Awesome job. If this was another article over-hyping David Ortiz I was going to go nuts :-)

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Bball3345Draft Pick

1240 days ago

Score 3

If Ortiz had come up on top, I probably wouldn't have even posted the article...just kidding Red Sox fans:)

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JCantRootWaterboy

1240 days ago

Score 1

Great article. Nice premise. Good research and interesting results. I think the most striking numbers were Morneau's efficiency and the amount of people on base for David Ortiz. Don't get me wrong he's still really good, but that's a ton of baserunners in front of you.

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Anonymous Fanatic #1

1240 days ago

Score 0

This is fascinating- I would add one more column- % of time driving self in. I don't know what the average is, maybe 2-3 percent? That would give a bit of a boost to the power guys, but I think it would be legitimate.

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Twins15Varsity Captain

1240 days ago

Score 0

Very interesting research... thanks for posting.

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Anonymous Fanatic #2

1240 days ago

Score 0

Good Stuff

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XinophDraft Pick

1240 days ago

Score -3

Good job, even if it is another article attempting to prove that X Red Sox player isn't as good as people think he is. Ortiz's value is less in how many RBIs he has than in *when* he gets them. If you could do research and figure out whose RBIs most often tied the game or brought their team into the lead, it would be a lot more relevant to the whole clutch debate.

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Ron Sen, MDRed-Shirting

1239 days ago

Score -1

I applaud your work but feel that your argument is flawed. The incredible and shocking limitation is that you discount the value of the home run. If you account for the home run expectancy, that overcomes the disparity, by far. It would be the equivalent in evaluating win rate in trading instead of expectancy, how much money is actually derived from the trades. Driving in runs with singles is great, but the great RBI guys get intentionally walked AND pitched around, too.

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DNLLegend

1239 days ago

Score 1

He's not undercounting HRs. He's trying to measure the frequency with which a batter drives in baserunners. He's awarding the batter a RBI for each of the baserunners who score, just not for the batter himself (a non-baserunner).

You're right, though, that guys like Ortiz get walked a lot more often in this situation. You can factor that in by making it AB (plus sacrifice flies and walks with the bases loaded) with runners on base instead of PA. The argument would be that the batter had little control of his own destiny, and therefore should neither be penalized nor credited with the outcome.

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Bball3345Draft Pick

1239 days ago

Score 0

Rob, I am not saying Lance Berkman is a better OVERALL hiiter than Ortiz or Pujols, just he has beene better at driving runners in. The reason I did not include home runs, is that the hitter driving himself in would be counting his starting position on the basepaths. A home run starts a runner at home, while a triple starts a runner on third, etc. If I were to give the batters credit for driving themselves in, then I would have to make adjustments for times they hit triples, doubles, etc. Then, I would no longer be measuring what I wanted to.

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