Prince Albert Pujols, he reigneth

JR (Vegas)

Regarding the Triple Crown, I know RBI is a meaningless stat, having said that, I think it would still be fun to see Votto or Pujols win the Triple Crown. What are your thoughts?

Klaw (1:24 PM)

Mixed. On the one hand, it's fun to see someone chase a record or milestone that hasn't been touched in 40 years. On the other, won't it lead to a new emphasis on or love affair with RBI?

That's like every bad stereotype about "stats" guys summed up in two lines. That might be the dumbest thing that KLaw's ever said in a chat.

B-b-but it WOULD reinforce the notion that RBI is a valuable stat.

I like that little exchange; I think it's fine to have mixed feelings about the significance of a TC. (I guess I consider mixed feelings a victory from a sabermetrician.) The one part I find silly is the questioner's blithe description of RBI as meaningless. They're not meaningless! Flawed, sure, like a lot of stats. But if you were to go through everything Bill James has ever written, and I'd be surprised if he ever described RBI as meaningless. (Law's concern that a Triple Crown will lead to mass stupidity is kind of funny, though.)

RBI make Joe Carter's career look Hall-worthy. They are meaningless in terms of evaluating players comparatively, so I don't know what other meaning they could have.

...unless it's "I was attached to them in my youth, just like w/ Laverne & Shirley"

I wrote a mammoth thing for my old fanzine on how wildly deceptive Carter's RBI counts were (using mostly situational stats from the old Elias annuals); I'm well aware of that. But again, it's a big leap from flawed to meaningless. An RBI means that someone was on base and you did something to get him (or, with a HR, yourself) home. That's not meaningless. As to whether you got a zillion chances to do so because you had Rickey Henderson and Roberto Alomar and Tony Gwynn batting ahead of you, like Carter did throughout his career, that's another issue, and you take that into account when necessary. But I still think you'll find that Joe Carters are outnumbered by guys who have high RBI counts because they're very good hitters.

We keep ending up at the same place: you're a true believer, I'm not.

I'm a true believer that you are trolling this board with stale ideas about 5-7 years after people got tired of talking about them.

RBIs are purely circumstantial, with the exception of the HR.

Let me go back to the Jennifer Doyle quote I posted on the sabermetric thread: "and know how to hold contradiction in their head without trying to resolve it." I don't think it's that difficult to navigate your way through the idea that RBI are another indicator of value with some players (most, I'd say), and not so much with others. Instead, "RBI are meaningless" seems to me to be grounded in a belief that because you sometimes get a case like Carter's, you better just throw the whole stat out for fear that anybody mistakes Joe Carter for a Hall of Famer. (A mistake the writers rather easily avoided.) That's why I find the Law's "won't it lead to a new emphasis on or love affair with RBI?" so funny. It's like he's afraid that, having internalized the idea that RBI should not be taken at face value, we're going to unlearn that because Albert Pujols wins a Triple Crown.

Shasta: geez, that's really a shame. Someone's questioning some ideas you hold dear, and you don't want to be questioned. Give me a break.

Trolling? Really? Come on.

RBIs are purely circumstantial

Well, no--RBI opportunities are purely circumstantial; to get the RBI, you have to do something.

I have no idea what constitutes trolling; I'm sure there's a sabermetric formula that makes that clear. But I've been posting on ILM and ILE for six or seven years (formerly under my real name); just started posting on ILB maybe six months ago. I mean, is there some kind of hazing ritual I was supposed to sign up for beforehand?

rbi's are a fine descriptive stat. when i read a box score it's cool to know who drove in the runs. i'm not sure that the only value of a stat is that you can use it to compare players.

or do u guys find wpa completely meaningless too

This whole Capt. Save-a-trad-stat is funny, maybe I'm taking you too seriously. What sacred cow are you going to reclaim next Clemenza, perhaps Wins as the absolute measure of a pitching performance? I have no problems with trolling, it's just a bit anachronistic on this board which maybe has a long history of debating trad vs. sabr and IMHO feels a bit played out in 2010, but i think I mentioned on that other thread might be worth revisiting...? Not sure if your arguments are really shifting the paradigm though tbh.

Now I have a hot chick waiting in my bed busy weekend y'all, enjoy your day!

If some of this stuff has been debated before, fair enough. But it's not like I'm pulling it out a hat--on this thread, the question of whether or not RBI mean anything ties in directly with the question of whether or not the Triple Crown means anything, which ties in directly with the subject's thread, Albert Pujols. It's not a mission; it just kind of evolved.

I do find your irritation at having your worldview questioned highly ironic. I'm trying to remember the Abstract where Bill James wrote, "We should question everything. Until my ideas pass into conventional wisdom, though--we can stop questioning at that point and just start congratulating ourselves about how smart we are. And if anybody doesn't fall into line, we'll just yell 'Troll!'" Maybe I missed that one.

B-b-but it WOULD reinforce the notion that RBI is a valuable stat.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 28 August 2010 13:25 (2 hours ago)

No it wouldn't ... people already view RBI as a valuable stat, I don't see how someone would argue that it becomes even *more* valuable because somebody leads the league in RBI + a few other categories.

I was really LOLing at the way Klaw framed his response -- as if RBI was some kind of evil political entity that could rise up and destroy the foundations of baseball.

Clemenza -- I don't know if anyone is really arguing that RBI are completely meaningless, but it's really difficult to use RBI as a metric for comparing players (never mind comparing across eras, but even for comparing players on the same team in the same year ... Joe Carter is a good example of this). Having numbers as a basis for comparing players is like, 99% of the reason that there are so many stats in baseball. What's the point of relying on data that doesn't help to show why Player A is better than Player B?

RBI is also a fairly arbitrary stat ... as you prob know, it was one of the last major official stats to be instituted (in 1921, I think). When you think about it, the definition of RBI is pretty contrived. There's no obvious reason why it should have the kind of importance that it does.

i would argue that stats were developed to describe the events of a game and comparing players is a secondary use.

Stat categories were invented to keep track of what happened in a game, but we use stats for comparing players. You don't really learn anything about players from a single boxscore, but a season's worth of boxscores is meaningful.

Thanks to both of you for your sanity.

NoTime: We both seem to find Law's comment funny for the same reason, so we're starting on the same page. I took "meaningless" right from JR in Vegas's question, and it developed from there. I really and truly am cognizant of the inherent flaws in RBI, and have been for quite some time. Even if I hadn't been, I think any Jays fan who experienced the Carter years would quickly arrive at such an understanding. I think my argument with those guys is simply that I don't want to throw RBI out the window altogether, and, if I'm understanding them correctly, they do.

One thing I like about the Triple Crown is that it ensures RBI do not exist in a vacuum--you also have to hit home runs, and you have to hit for a high average. You're not going to see a Joe Carter-like player win a Triple Crown.

Someone who makes a living evaluating prospects (like Klaw) probably has even fewer reasons to care about RBI ... even old school scouts would probably get laughed at for saying that so-and-so is 2nd on his college team in RBI's, that shows he's a gamer and we should draft him. What do RBI's tell us about a player's raw ability? (answer: probably nothing) So why should we use RBI to gauge ability at the major league level?

(sigh)

You're watching a game. Your team has a runner on a second and the next guy gets a hit and knocks him in. You get excited, he gets an RBI. At the end of the year, there's a number that more or less describes how many times that happened. That's all--not how many times as a percentage, not whether or not he's a better or worse player than they guy he knocked in, and not whether or not he has character. Just how many times. If other people read those things into the number--and I will agree with you that they do--that's their problem; I know how to apply some context, so I don't feel there's any great need to get rid of the number.

ntbt you keep shifting the argument--no one is saying we should use rbi's to evaluate a player's ability.

I wasn't arguing with you guys in my last post, I was trying to make the case for a guy like Klaw (I have no idea if he'd agree with my post or not), at least based on what he implied in his chat comment. Although I think it's a reasonable point -- what happens between amateur and pro baseball where RBI's suddenly matter a lot more to so many people?

I totally agree with clemenza's last post ... if a guy knocks in the winning run in the ninth, he's the hero. If he does it a bunch of times in the season, then that a nice story, and it's worth keeping track of those things.

Last post before I head out for some...what's that called again?..."fresh air." One thing I desire in a statistic is that I have the ability to calculate it myself. One of the reasons that WAR and VORP and Win Shares have limited appeal to me is that they involve a series of calculations that are well outside my scope. Conversely, I think James's RC/27 outs is the greatest stat ever invented because a) it avoids most of the blind spots of traditional stats, b) it produces a number that's very easy to get a handle on (a team of this player would be expected to score this may runs), and c) if I have a calculator handy, I can figure it out myself quickly and easily. I'll give WAR and VORP the first two, but not the third. (Actually, I would always use the easier and slightly less accurate RC/25.5 outs.)

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/116207-albert-pujols-picks-up-award-at-glenn-beck-rally

When will Albert stop winning awards???

(sigh)

You're watching a game. Your team has a runner on a second and the next guy gets a hit and knocks him in. You get excited, he gets an RBI. At the end of the year, there's a number that more or less describes how many times that happened. That's all--not how many times as a percentage, not whether or not he's a better or worse player than they guy he knocked in, and not whether or not he has character. Just how many times. If other people read those things into the number--and I will agree with you that they do--that's their problem; I know how to apply some context, so I don't feel there's any great need to get rid of the number.

― clemenza, Saturday, August 28, 2010 12:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is pretty otm, i generally think that no stats are completely worthless as long as you understand exactly what they measure and how they correlate with other measures. i think the attitude of a lot of people like Law is "people aren't gonna stop using this number to evaluate players unless we get rid of it completely" which i don't think is the only approach here.

Heretic. Apostate. Troll. On behalf of Steve Shasta, I cast thee out!

(Fresh air is good. Sunshine is fine.)

on the other hand, i'm not quite sure which i find more gross aesthetically - a stat which tells you something that's unhelpful (RBI) or a stat which tells you something incomplete (AVG)

Unless you believe in a single, all-encompassing stat like Win Shares or WAR claim to be, then all stats are incomplete. I don't think any stat is inherently unhelpful either. RBI does tell you something about the season a player is having, it just doesn't measure what a lot of people think it measures.

An RBI means that someone was on base and you did something to get him (or, with a HR, yourself) home. That's not meaningless.

No; driving in the run during game X is NOT meaningless. Toting em all up and saying Joe Shlabotnik had 12 fewer than Roy Hobbs this year, THAT'S meaningless.

How can something that has meaning at the game level not have any meaning at the seasonal level? Provided, once again, you're aware of context. I'm not trying to be difficult; I sincerely don't get that.

cause over the course of a season the fact that roy had 12 more than joe basically becomes random--a function of the opportunities that they both had etc. etc.

i mean hell if in a single game joe had 5 and roy had none that doesn't say anything about if joe is a better ballplayer--just that he contributed more in that one game.

btw Shlabotnik's still not a deserving All-Star

a function of the opportunities that they both had etc. etc.

Yes; that's the context. I'm not arguing that we lose that--it's crucial. But the fact that Shlabotnik did this great thing to win last night's game, and he went on to do it 99 more times over the course of the season, I don't want to lose that, either.

This is exhausting. I think I need to go find an argument about racism or abortion or religion, something genial like that.

except not all RBIs are equally "great things"

xp

well I'm tearing you a new one over on the Scott Pilgrim thread :)

yeah clemenza we shouldn't "lose" it but do you see how over the course of 162 games there are so many variables that make it hard to isolate the *meaning* of x rbi's--a problem we don't have in a single game

Acknowledged--six times over!

Thanks for the heads-up, Morbius; answered.

Since this is now the unofficial Triple Crown thread ... I just realized that Halladay has a chance to win the pitching TC this year (he leads in ERA and K, and is one off the lead in W).

I'm assuming that's for both leagues, too. Wow.

0-3 for Albert, down to .316; Votto up to .327, with 3 RBI tonight. I'm ready to switch my allegiance. I'm that loyal.

i like them both but its pretty likely that they'll kill each other's chances at it

Omar Infante (.341) still has an outside shot at the batting title even if he doesn't hit 502 PA.

Will he be close? If not, he'll get charged with a lot oh-fers to bring him to 502.

He's at 370 with 30 games to go...hits leadoff, so he'll probably manage four PA/game. I'm guessing he'll finish right around 500. He's crazy hot this year, I can see him doing it.

I think Ciderpress is probably right, but if one of them does break free of the other, that'll be almost funny if Omar Infante gets in there and mucks things up. Poor guy--he was a villain for getting picked for the All-Star Game, now he can be a villain for winning the batting title.

Ahem, Carlos Gonzalez is htting .326, let's not rule him out quite yet.