Here’s a trivia question question that may stump even the most ardent of baseball fans and historians: What’s an offensive feat, measured over the course of a season, that Wally Berger, Nate Colbert and Sammy Sosa have accomplished and Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays and other immortals have not?
Answer: Colbert, Berger and Sosa are among a small group of players who had a hand in at least 30 percent of their team’s runs in a season.
I call this stat Runs Accounted For (RAF) and it’s fairly easy to calculate. Just add a player’s RBI and run totals for a season, subtract home runs since those count double, and divide by the total number of runs his team scores. From there, multiply by 100 to get the percentage of runs a player accounts for.
To be clear, RAF proposes that a player has a hand in any run he bats in or scores himself. While this admittedly leads to some double counting among teammates, since one player can score on another man’s RBI, I think it’s a good way to make relative comparisons between players of different eras and compensate for those who played on worse teams than others.
RAF rates players, past and present, who were most-indispensable to helping their teams score runs. The stat also rewards good base running, an underrated offensive skill and correlates strongly to OPS, a combination of on-base and slugging percentage. In fact, I used the lists of OPS leaders to seek out possible candidates for here.
What quickly became apparent in calculating RAF is that while many players have accounted for at least 25 percent of their team’s runs in a season, few have cracked 30 percent. I don’t know why this is. I found 14 players who have done it a total of 25 times. They are as follows, in order of highest RAF:
|
Player |
Year |
RAF |
Runs |
RBI |
HR |
Team |
Record |
Team Runs |
| 1 |
Ted Williams |
1942 |
36.53% |
141 |
137 |
36 |
Red Sox |
93-59 |
761 |
| 2 |
Honus Wagner |
1908 |
34.02% |
100 |
109 |
10 |
Pirates |
98-56 |
585 |
| 3 |
Babe Ruth |
1919 |
33.33% |
103 |
114 |
29 |
Red Sox |
66-71 |
564 |
| 4 |
Nate Colbert |
1972 |
32.78% |
87 |
111 |
38 |
Padres |
58-95 |
488 |
| 5 |
Wally Berger |
1935 |
32.52% |
91 |
130 |
34 |
Braves |
38-115 |
575 |
| 6 |
Ty Cobb |
1909 |
32.13% |
116 |
107 |
9 |
Tigers |
98-54 |
666 |
| 7 |
Ty Cobb |
1911 |
32.01% |
147 |
127 |
8 |
Tigers |
89-65 |
831 |
| 8 |
Nap Lajoie |
1901 |
31.8% |
145 |
125 |
14 |
Athletics |
74-62 |
805 |
| 9 |
Chuck Klein |
1933 |
31.795% |
101 |
120 |
28 |
Phillies |
60-92 |
607 |
| 10 |
Ty Cobb |
1917 |
31.77% |
107 |
102 |
6 |
Tigers |
78-75 |
639 |
| 11 |
George Sisler |
1919 |
31.71% |
96 |
83 |
10 |
Browns |
67-72 |
533 |
| 12 |
Sammy Sosa |
2001 |
31.15% |
146 |
160 |
64 |
Cubs |
88-74 |
777 |
| 13 |
Ty Cobb |
1915 |
30.98% |
144 |
99 |
3 |
Tigers |
100-54 |
778 |
| 14 |
Chuck Klein |
1931 |
30.85% |
121 |
121 |
31 |
Phillies |
66-88 |
684 |
| 15 |
Joe Jackson |
1912 |
30.72% |
121 |
90 |
3 |
Naps |
75-78 |
677 |
| 16 |
Ty Cobb |
1907 |
30.59% |
97 |
119 |
5 |
Tigers |
92-58 |
693 |
| 17 |
Hank Aaron |
1963 |
30.57% |
121 |
130 |
44 |
Braves |
84-78 |
677 |
| 18 |
Chuck Klein |
1930 |
30.51% |
158 |
170 |
40 |
Phillies |
52-102 |
944 |
| 19 |
Babe Ruth |
1921 |
30.49% |
177 |
171 |
59 |
Yankees |
98-55 |
948 |
| 20 |
Dale Murphy |
1985 |
30.38% |
118 |
111 |
37 |
Braves |
66-96 |
632 |
| 21 |
Nap Lajoie |
1910 |
30.29% |
94 |
76 |
4 |
Naps |
71-81 |
548 |
| 22 |
Ty Cobb |
1918 |
30.25% |
83 |
64 |
3 |
Tigers |
55-71 |
476 |
| 23 |
Honus Wagner |
1905 |
30.2% |
114 |
101 |
6 |
Pirates |
96-57 |
692 |
| 24 |
George Sisler |
1920 |
30.11% |
137 |
122 |
19 |
Browns |
76-77 |
797 |
| 25 |
Jeff Bagwell |
1994 |
30.07% |
104 |
116 |
39 |
Astros |
66-49 |
602 |
Several greats never cracked 30 percent, including: Barry Bonds, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Ken Griffey Jr., Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, and Al Simmons, whose careers I examined year-by-year on Baseball-Reference. If anyone has a player they think qualifies, let me know, and if necessary, I’d be happy to add him here.
In general, RAF appears to favor three types of players: Lone guns on bad teams; speedy contact hitters with sizable RBI and run totals, but few home runs; and those greats who would have shined no matter the era. The stat is less rewarding to a DiMaggio or a Gehrig, who had the misfortune — at least for our purposes here — to play on star-packed clubs. Gehrig may have the most runs ever accounted for in one season, with 301 in 1931, though that was just over 28 percent of the 1,067 his Yankees amassed. Most years, Ruth and Gehrig drove each others percentages down. Ruth, for his part, fell short of the 30 percent mark with his 60-home-run effort in 1927, as well as every other year of his final 14 seasons.
Interestingly, Bonds accounted for more runs before he (probably) started using steroids in 1999. Bonds accounted for more than 200 runs three times in his career: 1993, 1996 and 1998, one more reason he might have been better before steroids. Not to mention the younger, clean Bonds also won Gold Gloves (lots of them) which probably saved some runs, too.
Of the players who accounted for 30 percent or more of their teams’ runs at least once, I don’t know what’s more impressive: That Cobb accomplished the feat six times in a twelve-season stretch or that Ruth and Lajoie did it for multiple teams. More astonishing? Ted Williams’ 1942 season, where he hit for the Triple Crown and accounted for 36.53 percent of Boston’s runs, wasn’t enough for American League Most Valuable Player honors. The award went to Joe Gordon, who accounted for just 21.6 percent of the World Series champion Yankees’ runs and didn’t even lead his team in the stat, finishing behind Joe DiMaggio and Charlie Keller.
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1. Jose Can You Seabiscuit Posted: July 26, 2010 at 12:38 PM (#3599091)"well, men, these maps are rather old, but what you do is fly out over Gaul, and drop your bombs on the Holy Roman Empire"
I seem to recall that Bill James said that the HR should be added back in, not omitted...
And what's with the huge intro? Thumbnails.
No, no, no... You divide runs produced by the team's total runs scored, and multiply by 100! Bold and innovative!
Theoretically you'd want a few good players batting right around your great players that he can knock in, and they can knock him in and then have the rest of the team be terrible. A post DH-AL team is an impossible setting. You also don't want to be too much of a home run hitter, since this stupid stat arbitrarily punishes home runs (notice only three seasons with more than 40 HR on the list) for no sensible reason. A high average doubles hitter with the same SLG as a home run hitter should rate very well.
Bonds' teams during his second peak were just too crappy to knock him in, teams walked him to reduce his RBI, and he had a huge amount of his value coming from home runs and less from other areas than he did when younger.
I invented one, too, btw. Take RP and divide by opponents runs, just because I can. And call it "the Fear Factor."
Bottom of the 9th, visiting team leads 1-0, records 2nd and "final out," next batter hits a 2-run homer to win the game. The visiting team has an 0-1 RWLAFO!
That or compile a huge number of R and RBI for any team.
The resulting mix of player-seasons that qualify doesn't share any interesting feature except curiosity. And yes, this is the kind of thing that Bill James would mess around with in the early Abstracts, without asserting much worth for it. IIRC Del Pratt was a monster for the real-bad Browns teams at either driving in or scoring a large percentage of their runs, which is one reason James paid more attention to Pratt than other historians, which is to say any at all.
I recall he very specifically mentioned that Nate Colbert had the record for most RBIs as a percent of team runs (and he also very specifically mentioned that it was a meaningless curiosity)
No. The second guy has one run scored but not an RBI. Nonetheless, he gets one run "accounted for" the same as the guy who hits a solo home run, which is obviously preposterous. The logical thing is to add runs and rbis and divide by two, so that you are counting none of them twice.
but yeah, as a one-off quick hit, that was a fine a fun read.
Closely behind it is new stats.
Every 3-4 years some baseball fan, interested in stats, but one who has never read Pete Palmer, Bill James, Total baseball or BPro, or visited this site, has the dual realization that outs should be used as a denominator instead of "at bats", and that total total bases (total bases plus walks, steals etc) should be used instead of hits, and voila! reinvents Total Average- a stat which would have been ground breaking 50+ years ago.
Every 3-4 years likewise, someone thinks that adding Runs + Ribbies and subtracting HRs makes sense... Total Average of course makes sense- the elements are weighted wrong, but the idea is sound, "Runs Produced" does not make sense- there is some hope for those who reinvent Total Average, none for the Runs Produced crowd.
When my brother and I used to play whiffleball, we'd go through an entire lineup, and when you get to the pitcher's spot, the rule was you had to flip the bat around. Mendoza was a bit before our time, but if Rafael Belliard was part of the lineup the same rule applied.
we called that hitting 'chicken-leg style'
But even then, people screw it up. You can't divide by total runs if you give credit to both the R and the RBI. You either need to divide by total team R and RBI or by double the total runs. Neither one will give you the proper answer anyway since the first doesn't count some of the runs under RBI (RBI on double plays, on errors, etc.) and the second will result in your players not adding up to 100%.
And subtracting HR is just asinine.
I was once fascinated for some time by an article pointing out that the Knicks were something like 86-0 in the Ewing era when they scored over 100 points and allowed under 100.
How about we count baseball runs like hockey points? Every run has a scorer and 0 to 3 assists. Who are the career leaders in that? Does a stolen base count as assisting your own run?
I fall into this category. the question I have has been bothering my subconscious for a while. Has anyone normalised the total bases generated per out for a player ( adding in stolen bases ). Because this seems a much better way of comparing hitters than OPS+.
Similarly, total bases per out generated and given up as a better indicator than a pythagorean record.
For pitchers, we can even flip it( ha! what an idea! outs per total bases given up ). Though this won't help comparing relievers and starters, these metrics imo ( and a lazy one at that, since I haven't bothered to create a full spreadsheet ) seems a better tool to compare hitters and pitchers than era+ and ops+.
And of course it's not for serious analysis.
--
When I saw the article, I was wondering if somebody had made a stat where, for each run, you broke it down into the contributions of everyone whose actions led to the run. Like, the starting pitcher walked the leadoff hitter (.15), the leadoff hitter took the walk (.15), the next hitter hit a ball into the gap (.2 for him, .2 for the pitcher), the outfielder let it get past him to the wall (.3)... something like that.
Total bases does not include walks, hbp, etc.
The version I was thinking of was did. every offensive contribution like hbp, walks, sbs, reaching on error. anything done which didnt create an out
I think you are reinventing
this
Take every base, including walks, steals, sac hits, ROE, etc (subtract CS, GDP etc) divide by outs.
1: it correlates very well with runs, but not as well as OPS or OPS+
2: It doesn't correlate as well with actual W-L as Pythagorean W-L does.
It seems like a straightforward calculation, if a bit more data-intensive. It'd answer the non-obvious (to me) question of whether a 95 OPS+ is good for a SS, or a 125 OPS+ is good for a 1B.
Heck you could even calculate it for every position, just to see how Joe Mauer would rate as a 1B. You could prefix the stat with each position's number, e.g., 3OPS+ is OPS relative to all 1B in the league.
Eh? The first guy has 1+1-1=1; one Run Participated In (as Tango calls it, and which is terminology I support, and I think I even used something similar once upon a time). The second guy has 1 for the run he scored. If you mean to say the second guy also drove in a run, then he's 1+1-0=2; two RPI. It makes sense.
You have to take out the HR. RPI is highly context-dependent, as it's based on two statistics that are highly context-dependent, and you probably wouldn't want to use it to provide any serious valuation of a player. It is descriptive, however, and is as useful as the user wants to make it.
No, TA is essentially bases per out. The problem with TA is not that the weights are wrong, it's that the data is incomplete. If we had complete data on every base and every out, TA would correlate 100% with runs. The only remaining problem with *full* TA would be the attribution of each base and out to individuals, when more than one player is involved, which would involve some subjective judgement. But in theory, TA, or bases per out is a perfect stat.
You have to take out the HR. RPI is highly context-dependent, as it's based on two statistics that are highly context-dependent, and you probably wouldn't want to use it to provide any serious valuation of a player. It is descriptive, however, and is as useful as the user wants to make it.
As a counting stat, sure, it's descriptive. But not as a percentage of anything unless you take the RPI for every player on the team and add them up and use that as the denominator.
Even then, I have no idea how this would be useful at all.
First off, I understand if something like this already exists. I read every great baseball book I can get my hands on but don't know them all (I'm 26.) I admittedly have not read much Bill James, Pete Palmer or John Thorn and haven't studied Baseball Prospectus or this site beyond to note when my work has been linked to in either place.
I also understand that the stat I propose, RAF is a little wacky. I emailed Thorn about it on Friday and he concluded it was "an oddball notion." Fair enough, but I think RAF is valuable in two ways:
1) I have been reading a Ted Williams' book where he ranks the 20 greatest hitters of all-time. Williams values power hitters with good OPS, overlooking great contact hitters like George Sisler, Honus Wagner and Nap Lajoie, not to mention Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn. This bothered me, and I wanted to find something that would reward those types of hitters, who I would argue were just as valuable as any number of sluggers.
2) I gave this defense of my stat to Thorn, and I think it bears repeating here:
Your desire to come up with a stat that confirms what you believe to be true, regardless of whether it actually is or not, does not represent science. (Admittedly, Williams' thought process as you describe it isn't necessarily science either. But, science would yield something closer to his conclusion than to yours, anyway.)
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