There's no "I" in RBI! (Wait, yes there is)

The RBI has been a plucky little statistic through the years. According to Alan Schwarz's excellent book The Numbers Game it began, like so many great things, in Buffalo (I wish I could have a beef on weck right now). The Buffalo paper started to run a column of statistics called "runs batted in," all the way back in 1879. The Chicago Tribune picked up the stat the next year. Readers were immediately offended because you can't put anything by Chicago readers -- even in 1880 they understood that Ozzie Guillen is a bit loopy and that RBIs are context statistics. Leadoff men don't have nearly as many RBI chances as cleanup hitters. You can't drive a teammate in if there are no teammates on base. And so on.

It's amazing (and amusing) that baseball fans in 1880 -- when pitchers threw the ball underhanded and the mound was 45 feet from home plate and foul balls caught after one bounce were outs -- may have had a fuller concept of RBIs than some recent general managers and managers.

ANYWAY, the Tribune stopped running RBIs almost immediately. Henry Chadwick, the man who essentially invented baseball statistics, picked up the RBI again about 10 years later. He called hits and runs "useless and deceiving" and tried to shove the RBI down people's throats. Nobody wanted it -- it died a horrible death that same year (as did Joshua Norton, the only emperor in American history!)

In 1907, the New York Press baseball editor, Ernie Lanigan started publishing RBI totals. He was apparently an RBI zealot -- so much so that his ghost actually voted for Justin Morneau in last year's MVP balloting. Lanigan's RBI missionary work eventually led both leagues to adopt it as an official statistic in 1920 -- just as the game was coming out of the Deadball era (the first seven years, it was called "Runs Responsible For," and I think we should go back to that. It's a touching name. It's like the player doesn't just knock in the run, he will also take care of it until it is old enough to take care of itself. "Remember Jim, you are RESPONSIBLE for that run.").

The RBI became a wildly successful statistic in large part, I believe, because there's a nice round number to shoot for: Everybody can appreciate that 100 RBIs makes for a good season. It is absolutely stunning how important round numbers are to baseball -- there's a whole blog item in this. Maybe even a book.

Look: A good batting average is .300 ... you want to drive in 100 RBIs ... 300 wins gets you into the Hall of Fame ... 3000 hits gets you into the Hall of Fame (unless you gamble on baseball) ... 500 homers gets you into the Hall of Fame (unless you have a very bad appearance before Congress) ... 20 wins makes for a good season. ... In recent years, more statistically savvy fans can respect that a .400 on-base percentage is good and 30 Win Shares is great.

My favorite example of the round-number frenzy in the game -- and I may have mentioned this before -- is pitch count. A few years ago, people all around baseball decided all at once that it was very important to keep tabs of how many pitches their starter threw. Until then, pitchers could throw several hundred pitches in a game -- nobody cared. According to a pretty famous story, Sandy Koufax once threw like 987 pitches in a SPRING TRAINING game.

Anyway, one day general managers and managers and everyone else in the game decided high pitch counts were bad. They decided to keep the pitch number manageable to prevent injuries, to prevent arm fatigue, to protect their huge investments and, mostly, to save their jobs. You couldn't blame them. Protecting pitchers is literally a multi-billion dollar industry.

And so after thousands of hours of study, after having the brightest people in the game break down video, after intense interviewing of the pitchers themselves, after a thorough audit of the statistics, after consulting with doctors and trainers and physiologists and George Will and anyone else who might have a thought on the subject, they calculated the optimum number of pitches a pitcher should throw in a game.

And they came up this number: 100.

ANYWAY, back to RBIs, it's well established that MVP voters care way too much about it. The MVP award, especially in the American League, usually goes to the MVRG -- Most Valuable RBI Guy. I broke this down once and found that 40 of the last 75 MVP awards in the AL went to the player who:

1. Had the most RBIs.
and
2. Played on a contending team (admittedly this is a tricky determination -- it's all perception).

So last year, the RBI leader was Big Papi. But everybody pretty much determined in August that the Red Sox were not real contenders. So Ortiz was out. Next in line in RBIs was Justin Morneau. He played on the division-winning Minnesota Twins. He was the clear MVRG. And he won the MVP.

The MVRG formula has its flaws -- many years there is no clear cut MVRG and also voters will not give Manny Ramirez an MVP award no matter how many RBIs he manages -- but the fact that you can nail the MVP more than 50 percent of the time based entirely on one statistic tells you how important RBIs are to people determining how "valuable" players are these days.

But this is where it gets intersting (at least to baseball history goofballs like me): Yes, RBIs are very important for determining current players. They are significantly less important when judging PAST players.

For instance, let me ask you this trivia question: What do you think is more important for the Hall of Fame, scoring runs or RBIs? You probably guessed "RBIs" because why else would I ask you this question in an RBI blog? That's the problem with asking anybody a question these days -- everybody is too suspicious and jaded to answer any question honestly. If you ask anyone a question like "Guess how much I weigh?" or "Guess how much I paid for this car?" they will ALWAYS guess too low on the weight and the price of the car. Always. And then when you tell them the real weight/price, they will say, "Oh, that's good too."

Just once I'd like to go up to someone and say: Got an amazing trivia question for you. Who do you think made more money last year, Tiger Woods or Carrot Top? And when they inevitably say "Carrot Top" I can say, "No, Tiger Woods ... what are you, some kind of moron? It wasn't even close. Tiger Woods made like 300 million dollars. Carrot Top made like 29 bucks all year. How could you guess Carrot Top?"

ANYWAY, I'm losing the point. I would have suspected that RBIs were a much more telling Hall of Fame statistic than runs. Who cares about runs? But take a look:

Leading run scorers NOT in the Hall of Fame (eligible players since 1900)
-- Dwight Evans (66th)
-- Lou Whitaker (84th)

Leading RBI producers NOT in the Hall of Fame (eligible players since 1900)
-- Harold Baines (23rd)
-- Andre Dawson (31st)
-- Dave Parker (47th)
-- Rusty Staub (49th)
-- Jim Rice (52nd)
-- Joe Carter (53rd)
-- Mark McGwire (60th)
-- Jose Canseco (61st)
-- Ted Simmons (65th)
-- Dwight Evans (66th)
-- Chili Davis (70th)
-- Darrell Evans (74th)
-- Gary Gaetti (75th)
-- Ron Santo (79th)
-- Al Oliver (81st)
-- Graig Nettles (84th)

Well, that amazes me anyway. To be fair, there are several pre-1900 guys on the runs scored list who are not in the Hall of Fame -- led by Jimmy Ryan -- which probably skews the study. Also Pete Rose is 6th in runs (and tied for 84th in RBIs).

But it's still amazing to me. Seventeen of the Top RBI men ever are not in the Hall of Fame, and among them you would have to say that right now only Rice even seems likely to get in (there still could be a momentum shift for Dawson, I think).

I'm not the only one who has noticed it. Bill James points out: "A player whose chief credential for the Hall of Fame is his ability as an RBI man is much LESS likely to be taken seriously than a player of comparable ability who is a high-average hitter, a gold glove fielder or a pitcher. That has always interested me"

Why? I suspect this is, in part, because of those magic numbers again. Every eligible player with 3,000 or more hits is in the Hall of Fame -- and they all went in easily. As mentioned every eligible player with 500 homers (except Mark McGwire) is in the Hall of Fame -- though it took Killebrew four years because of his low batting average. Every eligible pitcher with 300 wins is in the Hall of Fame -- even relatively controversial choices like Don Sutton and Phil Niekro (I don't think they should have been controversial choices myself, but they were).

As for Gold Glove fielders, that's the one area where voters seem to go off reputation: Luis Aparcio, Ozzie Smith, Bill Mazeroski, Phil Rizutto and quite a few others are in the Hall of Fame in large part because the voters saw them make a lot of nice players.

But there is no magic number for career RBIs. If I gave you career RBI numbers -- say 1,628, 1537, 1,430 and 1,305 -- would they mean anything to you? Probably not (they are, in order, the career RBI totals for Baines, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Roberto Clemente). I would suggest RBIs are important to people when it comes to judging SEASONS because 100 is such an obvious benchmark -- if someone has 163 RBIs in a season you know that's an awful lot. But there is no such benchmark for career RBIs. Nobody really cares if you got 1,500 RBIs in your career.

And also, I think RBIs tend to fade in memory. A great defensive play will lodge in your imagination -- I can still think of a dozen amazing plays Ozzie Smith made or Andruw Jones. Anyone can still visualize Roberto Clemente making the throw from right field or Mike Schmidt charging a bunt. A home run hit by Reggie or Barry or Killer or McGwire will stick in your memory too -- you can probably come up with the five longest home runs you've seen in your life.

But how many Rusty Staub clutch singles with a man on second do you remember? The day he hit them, they were HUGE. And when you look back over a season, they're still pretty big. But when you look back over a career, I think, they fade away.

I'm not saying RBIs SHOULD be a bigger factor when choosing Hall of Famers. But it does surprise me that RBI men are so beloved and celebrated while they're playing, and then -- often enough -- forgotten when there are no longer men on second to drive in.