I'm having a fair amount of difficulty letting the RBI go. It's not that I don't see the inherent flaw there, I do, but it's just so easy, so pretty. We are so ingrained with it as fans, so conditioned to approve of what it's telling us about our hitters (if they have a lot of them, they are good) that we can't simply say goodbye just because it's the right thing to do. To be the better man, I have to let it go, even if all I want to do is send the RBI dirty texts.
RBI, as you may or may not know, doesn't really measure anything. The ability to drive in runs isn't really a skill set, because if no one is on base in front of you, how could you display that skill? Do the great RBI men lose their ability as hitters if no one is there? And are we to believe that some players elevate their performance in "key" situations, like the one presented with men on base? If that is the case, surely there would be a better way to measure it than the RBI. And that argument is based on the assumption that some players elevate themselves at certain times, or simply don't play as hard or concentrate as hard in other instances, a premise many smart baseball men don't subscribe to.
But the average baseball fan is not even remotely close to leaving the RBI, so I think the sabermetric crowd shouldn't be so quick to discount it either. In a vague, very remote and abstract way, RBI can be viewed as a useful tool in player evaluation, when viewed through the prism of line-up placement. For instance, the 3-4-5 hitters in a line-up who generally put up the most impressive RBI totals are usually the better hitters on the team, in terms of combining power and average. Similarly, those at the bottom of the line-up who in a given year put up impressive RBI totals could be viewed as men who did a lot with much less, and made the most of their opportunities. Conversely, if a middle of the order bat puts up low RBI totals, barring a complete meltdown from the 1-2 hitters in terms of OBP (see, caveats to the value=flaws) then we can surmise he did not perform up to snuff.
If that extremely unscientific method of evaluating RBI worth doesn't do it for you, then you can always use the "clutch hitter" approach we discussed earlier. If that falls short, you can be like me and just enjoy it like one would enjoy an Adam Sandler movie- shut your brain off and find happiness in something that makes no sense. The truth is, if you drive in a lot of runs, chances are you're a pretty good hitter. If you do it consistently year after year, the chances are even better that you're a good hitter. It's not fool proof, but you'll probably end up being right more often than not. And when you're not right, you'll see the folly in it all. The RBI might not make you a better fan, but it's still the most fun to take an Ambien and fool around with.
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