Prince Albert Pujols, he reigneth

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.

That "ahem" was rather prescient--after today's game, Gonzalez is at 31/97/.340. But I guess I'm not as excited by the idea of a Triple Crown per se as I thought I was. I was excited about Pujols winning one. He's out of it now. If Gonzalez were to win, though, it'd be every bit as suspect as most every other great season out of Colorado. He's got a 350-point differential in home/road slugging; he's Ruth at home, Vernon Wells on the road.

This has been some bizarre up-and-down story, though.

Yep, there's no two ways about it - the Triple Crown is a title that Coors will always be a big help with. On the other hand, Matt Holliday, Todd Helton, Larry Walker and Dante Bichette never won a triple crown, and you still need sustained excellence to even get close, so I can live with Cargo getting the plaudits.

I discovered earlier that he's not even on the ballot for 5-tool Player of the Year? Now *that* is dumb.

"Vernon Wells on the road"

Vernon Wells doesn't have an 8 to 1 SO to BB ratio.

75 K, 9 BB--yikes, hadn't noticed that. I just meant that Wells' home run rate and slugging pct. were comparable. And I didn't mean to be dismissive of Gonzalez's season; it'd still be an accomplishment, albeit a compromised one.

As has been pointed out, the fact that players like Cargo are SO strong at Coors makes them (and forgive me if this is stating the bleeding obvious) fantastic players for Colorado to sign. Cargo IS in consideration for the triple crown (and, if you believe some of the more ardent Roxkies fans, the MVP), and if he didn't play at Coors, he wouldn't be. So hallelujah, as a Rox fan, that he does!

Nothing especially startling here, but it does lay out numerically what's pretty clear: Pujols out, Votto longshot, Gonzalez improbably alive.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/cliff_corcoran/09/08/triple.crown.chances/index.html?eref=sihp

(This followed an exchange where KLaw said tying LaRussa staying to Pujols' re-signing was absurd)

John (St. Louis)

Pujols' future is not all about money, you're absolutely wrong about that . . . He isn't a greedy person

Klaw (1:15 PM)

Right. That's why, after the Cardinals overpaid him by a factor of 2.5 for his last pre-arbitration year, he cut them absolutely no discount on the long-term deal, and made a stink about how they had to give him that deal or he'd go year-to-year and leave as a free agent. (I'm not criticizing that stance. Just pointing out that he, like just about every other human being in history, has an inherently greedy streak.)

via Clem Comly of SABR:

Divisional Triple Crown Winners 1969-2009 (196 divisional races)

Williams 1972 E NL 37 122 .333
Foster 1977 W NL 52 149 .320
Rice 1978 E AL 46 139 .315
Bagwell 1994 C NL 39 116 .368
Belle 1998 C AL 49 152 .328
Ramirez 1999 C AL 44 165 .333
Guerrero 2000 E NL 44 123 .345
Holliday 2007 W NL 36 137 .340
Pujols 2008 C NL 37 116 .357

James did something similar a few years ago...I think he may have looked at guys who won or came close to winning their league Triple Crown. I checked Delgado for 2000: he took HR and RBI in the A.L. East, and finished second in BA (almost 30 points behind Garciaparra, though, so he wasn't really close).

It looks like a dead issue now, unless Gonzalez has at least a couple of multi-homer games. Which, if nothing else, shows that whatever you think of RBI or BA, this is a very hard thing to do.

I cant wait to see the list of assholes who dont vote for Pujols as MVP because the Cardinals dont make the playoffs.

well, there are other defensible reasons to list him second or third.

like hitting an infield pop up this year.

i can think of two reasons: Joey. Votto.

Ditto to Thinwall and Morbius. I'd normally agree with you about Pujols, but surely all votes for Votto (vote-o's?) this year are perfectly reasonable. Even a vote for Halladay seems fine, although somewhere along the way they stopped giving MVPs to pitchers.

If you subscribe to James's site, he has a big thing up today in the "Ask Bill" section about why he thinks no one wins the Triple Crown anymore.